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 t...

Letter to the editor of The Liberator, March 28, 1845. We have now, for the third winter, had our spirits refreshed, and our faith in the destiny of the Commonwealth strengthened, by th...

Under the one word, house, are included the schoolhouse, the alms-house, the jail, the tavern, the dwelling-house; and the meanest shed or cave in which men live contains the elements o...

Sometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and gossip, and worn out all my village friends, I rambled still farther westward than I habitually dwell, into yet more unfrequented pa...

After spending the night at a farmhouse in Château-Richer, about a dozen miles northeast of Quebec, we set out on our return to the city. We stopped at the next house, a picturesque old...

Written in Concord, July 19, 1842; first published in The Boston Miscellany Vol. 3, No. 3, January, 1843. Summer and winter our eyes had rested on the dim outline of the mountains in ou...

Packed in my mind lie all the clot… Which outward nature wears, And in its fashion’s hourly change It all things else repairs. In vain I look for change abroad,

So universal and widely related is any transcendent moral greatness, and so nearly identical with greatness everywhere and in every age—as a pyramid contracts the nearer you approach it...

The opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters commonly causes a pond to break up earlier; for the water, agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice. But...

I wish to speak a word for nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of natur...

We learn that Mr. Etzler is a native of Germany, and originally published his book in Pennsylvania, ten or twelve years ago; and now a second English edition, from the original American...

Sometimes I had a companion in my fishing, who came through the village to my house from the other side of the town, and the catching of the dinner was as much a social exercise as the ...

In October I went a-graping to the river meadows, and loaded myself with clusters more precious for their beauty and fragrance than for food. There too I admired, though I did not gathe...

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…