I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and tohunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance.
Henry David ThoreauWhen I think of the gold-diggers and the Mormons, the slaves and the slave-holders and the flibustiers, I naturally dream of a glorious private life. No, I am not patriotic.
Henry David ThoreauWhat is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that practically I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all.
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 ThoreauI believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology.
Henry David Thoreau