Ninety-nine one-hundredths of our lives we are mere hedgers and ditchers, but from time to time we meet with reminders of our destiny.
Henry David ThoreauI thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten today, that I might go a- fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have learned.
Henry David ThoreauThe poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes their widest deductions.
Henry David ThoreauA stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.
Henry David ThoreauMany expressions in the New Testament come naturally to the lips of all Protestants, and it furnishes the most pregnant and practical texts. There is no harmless dreaming, no wise speculation in it, but everywhere a substratum of good sense. It never reflects, but it repents. There is no poetry in it, we may say, nothing regarded in the light of beauty merely, but moral truth is its object. All mortals are convicted by its conscience.
Henry David Thoreau