“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.””

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don’t get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

It is never too late to give up your prejudices.

I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself.

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to be.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

The universe is wider than our views of it.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

All good things are wild and free.

Things do not change; we change.