Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in the most Oriental city, is seen the fresh and primitive and savage nature, in which Scythians and Ethiopians and Indians dwell. What is echo, what are light and shade, day and night, ocean and stars, earthquake and eclipse, there? The works of man are everywhere swallowed up in the immensity of nature. The AEgean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the Indian.
Henry David ThoreauMany of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.
Henry David ThoreauWhat lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
Henry David ThoreauAll nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all.
Henry David ThoreauIt is rare that we use our thinking faculty as resolutely as an irishman his spade. To please our friends and relatives we turn out our silver ore in cartloads, while we neglect to workour mines of gold known only to ourselves far up in the Sierras, where we pulled up a bush in our mountain walk, and saw the glittering treasure. Let us return thither. Let it be the price of our freedom to make that known.
Henry David ThoreauThe true and not despairing Friend will address his Friend in some such terms as these. "I never asked thy leave to let me love thee,--I have a right. I love thee not as something private and personal, which is your own, but as something universal and worthy of love, which I have found. O, how I think of you! You are purely good, --you are infinitely good. I can trust you forever. I did not think that humanity was so rich. Give me an opportunity to live.
Henry David Thoreau