I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.
Henry David ThoreauThe finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
Henry David Thoreauif i repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. what demon possessed me that i behaved so well?
Henry David ThoreauWe are constituted a good deal like chickens, which, taken from the hen, and put in a basket of cotton in the chimney-corner, willoften peep till they die, nevertheless; but if you put in a book, or anything heavy, which will press down the cotton, and feel like the hen, they go to sleep directly.
Henry David ThoreauSee yonder thin column of smoke curling up through the woods from some invisible farmhouse, the standard raised over some rural homestead.... It is a hieroglyphic of man's life, and suggests more intimate and important things than the boiling of a pot. Where its fine column rises above the forest, like an ensign, some human life has planted itself,--and such is the beginning of Rome, the establishment of the arts, and the foundation of empires, whether on the prairies of America or the steppes of Asia.
Henry David Thoreau