Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners?
Henry David ThoreauBut they who are unconcerned about the consequences of their actions are not therefore unconcerned about their actions.
Henry David ThoreauWe find it difficult to choose our direction because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.
Henry David ThoreauI lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once moreonly the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,--those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.
Henry David Thoreau