While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
Henry David ThoreauMen profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it.
Henry David ThoreauIn what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.
Henry David ThoreauYou may rely on it that you have the best of me in my books, and that I am not worth seeing personally, the stuttering, blunderingclod-hopper that I am. Even poetry, you know, is in one sense an infinite brag and exaggeration. Not that I do not stand on all that I have written,--but what am I to the truth I feebly utter?
Henry David Thoreau