There have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the only traces which they have left. They are the heathen.
Henry David ThoreauThe music of all creatures has to do with their loves, even of toads and frogs. Is it not the same with man?
Henry David ThoreauAll men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.
Henry David ThoreauWhether we live by the seaside, or by the lakes and rivers, or on the prarie, it concerns us to attend to the nature of fishes, since they are not phenomena confined to certain localities only, but forms and phases of the life in nature universally dispersed. The countless shoals which annually coast the shores of Europe and America are not so interesting to the student of nature as the more fertile law itselffrom which it results that they may be found in water in so many places, in greater or lesser numbers.
Henry David ThoreauNature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influencewhich flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.
Henry David ThoreauThe life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks where the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets.
Henry David Thoreau