After reading Howitt's account of the Australian gold-diggings one evening,... I asked myself why I might not be washing some golddaily, though it were only the finest particles,--why I might not sink a shaft down to the gold within me, and work that mine.... At any rate, I might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with love and reverence.

In 1848, Thoreau went to jail for refusing, as a protest against the Mexican war, to pay his poll tax. When RW Emerson came to bail him out, Emerson said, 'Henry, what are you doing in there?' Thoreau quietly replied, 'Ralph, what are you doing out there?'

I was not born to be forced.

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

There is no treatment for adore, but to love far more.

Faith never makes a confession.

I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.