"I did not know that mankind was..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“If I am not I, who will be?”

“In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind.”

“I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?”

“Ne'er ask me what raiment I'll wear, for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet--nay, sometime more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the overleather.”

“The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save-the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour-your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life-the greater is the store of your estranged being.”

“Wealth, taste and leisure can bring many things but they do not bring happiness.”

“We are visitors on this planet. We are here for one hundred years at the very most. During that period we must try to do something good, something useful, with our lives. if you contribute to other people's happiness, you will find the true meaning of life.”

“Continue to plant a kiss of concern on the cheek of the sick and the aged and infirm and count that actions as natural and to be expected.”

“Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence - neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish - it is an imponderably valuable gift. Each of us has a few minutes a day or a few hours a week which we could donate to an old folks home or a children's hospital ward. The elderly whose pillows we plump or whose water pitchers we refill may or may not thank us for our gift, but the gift is upholding the foundation of the universe.”