I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
Henry David ThoreauThere is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine, is no more a pine than a dead human carcass is a man.
Henry David ThoreauIf you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
Henry David ThoreauThe mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.
Henry David ThoreauI have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.
Henry David ThoreauWhere is the "unexplored land" but in our own untried enterprises? To an adventurous spirit any place--London, New York, Worcester, or his own yard--is "unexplored land," to seek which Frรฉmont and Kane travel so far. To a sluggish and defeated spirit even the Great Basin and the Polaris are trivial places.
Henry David Thoreau