"to be awake is to be alive. i have never yet met a man who was quite awake. how could i have looked him in the face?"

"i went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if i could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when i came to die, discover that i had not lived. i did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did i wish to practice resignation, unless it was completely necessary. i wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life..."

"let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion that covers the globe...till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we call reality..."

"time is but a stream i go fishing in. i drink at it; but while i drink i see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. i would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. i cannot count one. i know not the first letter of the alphabet. i have always been regretting that i was not as wise as the day i was born. the intellect is a clever; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. i do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. my head is hands and feet. i feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. my instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore-paws, and with it i would mine and burrow my way through these hills. i think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining rod and thin rising vapors i judge; and here i will begin to mine."

"rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee every where at home. there are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played. grow wild according to thy nature..."

"the universe is wider than our views of it."