What youth or maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? She flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they reside.
Henry David ThoreauTreat your friends for what you know them to be. Regard no surfaces. Consider not what they did, but what they intended.
Henry David ThoreauRoutine is a ground to stand on, a wall to retreat to; we cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against it.
Henry David ThoreauA man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread.
Henry David ThoreauProminent and influential editors, accustomed to deal with politicians, men of an infinitely lower grade, say, in their ignorance,that he acted "on the principle of revenge." They do not know the man. They must enlarge themselves to conceive of him.... They have got to conceive of a man of faith and of religious principle, and not a politician or an Indian; of a man who did not wait till he was personally interfered with or thwarted in some harmless business before he gave his life to the cause of the oppressed.
Henry David Thoreau