It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.
Henry David ThoreauThat is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience.
Henry David ThoreauIt is said that some Western steamers can run on a heavy dew, whence we can imagine what a canoe may do.
Henry David ThoreauScience with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day,--not an empty chamber, in which chemistry was left to work alone, but an inhabited house,--and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them.
Henry David Thoreau