“We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.”

Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream.

There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity.

We go all wrong by too strenuous a resolution to go right.

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

What other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!

Generosity is the flower of justice.

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.

Happiness is like a butterfly.

There is something truer and more real, than what we can see with the eyes, and touch with the finger.

What we call real estate – the solid ground to build a house on – is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.

What is the voice of song when the world lacks the ear of taste?

Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.

Men of cold passions have quick eyes.

I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!

The trees reflected in the river – they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them. So are we.

Mountains are earth’s undecaying monuments.

Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.

What is the Law of the Jungle? Strike first and then give tongue.

Here I am,’ I thought, ‘back from the jungle, back from the ruins. Here, where wealth is no longer gorgeous and power has no dignity.

Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.

When chill November’s surly blast Made fields and forests bare.

The fields have eyes, and the woods have ears.

If a man says something in the woods and there are no women there, is he still wrong?

I love the forest. It is the place where you hear yourself better.