"How shall we account for our pursuits,..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, [I] submit myself to my instinct to decide for me.”

“He who rides and keeps the beaten track studies the fences chiefly.”

“I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.”

“It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.”

“The only good imitations are those that poke fun at bad originals.”

“The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.”

“If names are not correct, then language is not in accord with the truth of things. If language is not in accord with the truth of things, then affairs cannot be carried out successfully.”

“American English is essentially English after having been wiped off with a dirty sponge.”

“Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seiner eigenen.He who is ignorant of foreign languages, knows not his own.”