Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods

"I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well."

"This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence."

"We need the tonic of wildness... At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature."

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."