If within the sophisticated man there is not an unsophisticated one, then he is but one of the devil's angels.
Henry David ThoreauI suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.
Henry David ThoreauEvery man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
Henry David ThoreauThe still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel.
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