Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation.—Walden
For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it. To speak critically, I never received more than one or two letters in my life—I wrote this some years ago—that were worth the postage.—Walden
Genius is the worst of lumber, if the poet would float upon the breeze of popularity.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets.—Journal, 3o November 1841
He who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind, is yet but half alive, is still-born.—Journal, 10 March 1856
He who resorts to the easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than if he took a nap.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
His humor is always subordinate to a serious purpose, though often the real charm for the reader is not so much in the essential progress and final upshot of this chapter, as in this indirect side-light illustration of every hue.—"Thomas Carlyle and His Works"
Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor Æschylus, nor Virgil even—works as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever, equalled the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the ancients.—Walden
How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects!—"Autumnal Tints"
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.—Walden
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