Books are for the most part willfully and hastily written, as parts of a system to supply a want real or imagined.
Henry David ThoreauThe ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.
Henry David ThoreauProbe the universe in a myriad of points. ... He is a wise man who has taken many views; to whom stones and plants and animals and a myriad of objects have each suggesting something, contributed something.
Henry David Thoreauf the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth - certainly the machine will wear out... but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.
Henry David ThoreauThink of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make a very barroom of the mind's inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied us,--the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts' shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide?
Henry David Thoreau