THOUGH all the fates should pro… Leave not your native land behind. The ship, becalmed, at length stan… The steed must rest beneath the hi… But swiftly still our fortunes pac…

Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird, Melting thy pinions in thy upward… Lark without song, and messenger o… Circling above the hamlets as they… Or else, departing dream, and shad…

But while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and read only particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of...

I think awhile of Love, and while… Love is to me a world, Sole meat and sweetest drink, And close connecting link Tween heaven and earth.

I am a parcel of vain strivings ti… By a chance bond together, Dangling this way and that, their… Were made so loose and wide, Methinks,

With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting ...

They who prepare my evening meal b… Carelessly hit the kettle as they… With tongs or shovel, And ringing round and round, Out of this hovel

Chancing to take a memorable walk by moonlight some years ago, I resolved to take more such walks, and make acquaintance with another side of nature. I have done so. According to Pliny,...

Whate’er we leave to God, God doe… And blesses us; The work we choose should be our o… God leaves alone. If with light head erect I sing,

At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I ...

There is a vale which none hath se… Where foot of man has never been, Such as here lives with toil and s… An anxious and a sinful life. There every virtue has its birth,

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in...

The genuine remains of Ossian, though of less fame and extent, are in many respects of the same stamp with the Iliad itself. He asserts the dignity of the bard no less than Homer, and i...

I heartily accept the motto—“That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to th...

MY life is like a stroll upon the… As near the ocean’s edge as I can… My tardy steps its waves sometimes… Sometimes I stay to let them over… My sole employment is, and scrupul…