Men must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one.
Henry David ThoreauWhat is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.
Henry David ThoreauThe civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on his marrow-bones.
Henry David Thoreau