Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
—"Resistance to Civil Government"Let him see that he does only what belongs to himself and to the hour.
—"Resistance to Civil Government"Let me forever go in search of myself; never for a moment think that I have found myself; be a stranger to myself, never a familiar, seeking acquaintance still.
—Journal, 16 July 1851Let me say to you and to myself in one breath: Cultivate the tree which you have found to bear fruit in your soil. Regard not your past failures nor successes. All the past is equally a failure and a success; it is success in as much as it offers you the present opportunity.
—Journal, after 16 July 1850Let the dead bury the dead. The best of them fairly ran down like a clock.
—"A Plea for Captain John Brown"Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails.
—WaldenLet your condiments be in the condition of your senses. To appreciate the flavor of these wild apples requires vigorous and healthy senses, papillæ firm and erect on the tongue and palate, not easily flattened and tamed.
—Cape CodLive in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
—Journal, 23 August 1853Looking southward, the heavens were completely overcast, the mountains capped with clouds, and the lake generally wore a dark and stormy appearance, but from its surface six or eight miles distant there was reflected upward through the misty air a bright blue tinge from the unseen sky of another latitude beyond.
—The Maine WoodsLove is so delicate and fastidious that I see not how [it] can ever begin. Do you expect me to love with you, unless you make my love secondary to nothing else?
—Journal, 14 March 1842Love never stands still, nor does its object. It is the revolving sun and the swelling bud. If I know what I love, it is because I remember it.
—Journal, 14 March 1842Making no complaint, offering no encouragement, one human being is made aware of the neighboring and contemporaneous existence of another.
—Journal, 1837-47Man flows at once to God as soon as the channel of purity, physical, intellectual, and moral is open.
—Journal, 1850