In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and winter before any thought will subside; we are sensible that behind the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain, and the bare clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which we occupy.
Henry David ThoreauBut men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost.
Henry David ThoreauAll men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.
Henry David ThoreauConcord River is remarkable for the gentleness of its current, which is scarcely perceptible, and some have referred to its influence the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of Concord, as exhibited in the Revolution, and on later occasions.
Henry David ThoreauWhat old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
Henry David ThoreauWho ever saw his old clothes, - his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
Henry David Thoreau