Quote collection
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"Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savagestands on the unelastic plank of famine."
"Be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely invested."
"I am never rich in money, and I am never meanly poor."
"It will always be found that one flourishing institution exists and battens on another mouldering one. The Present itself is parasitic to this extent."
"The past is only so heroic as we see it. It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field."
"Why look in the dark for light?"
"Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even stone walls have their foundation below the frost."
"Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much."
"I am a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure."
"The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker."
"It is not every man who can be a Christian, even in a very moderate sense, whatever education you give him. It is a matter of constitution and temperament, after all. He may have to be born again many times. I have known many a man who pretended to be a Christian, in whom it was ridiculous, for he had no genius for it. It is not every man who can be a free man, even."
"We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defenses only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free."
"There have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the only traces which they have left. They are the heathen."
"If I thought that I could speak with discrimination and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, I should praise them, but it tasks me too much. They seem to be the most civil and humane, but I may be mistaken."
"The whole of the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour, if not more, which the day did not bring forth."
"But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself."
"We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me."
"Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic."
"Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th,1847."
"What an admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life! Indeed, the unchallenged bravery which these studies imply, is far more impressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior."