The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. We hate the kindness which we understand.
Henry David ThoreauIt is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His natural foe is the government that drills him.
Henry David ThoreauThe echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.
Henry David ThoreauWe saw one school-house in our walk, and listened to the sounds which issued from it; but it appeared like a place where the process, not of enlightening, but of obfuscating the mind was going on, and the pupils received only so much light as could penetrate the shadow of the Catholic church.
Henry David Thoreau