It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard.
Henry David ThoreauNature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
Henry David ThoreauThe Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.
Henry David ThoreauWhat is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is.
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