I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.
Henry David ThoreauConcord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe.
Henry David ThoreauThe hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.
Henry David ThoreauSee how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
Henry David Thoreau