"If all were as it seems, and..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“Genius is not a retainer to any emperor.”

“Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.”

“You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.”

“There may be some difficulties, some interruptions, but as a nation and as a people, we are going to build a truly multiracial, democratic society that maybe can emerge as a model for the rest of the world.”

“America never was America to me And yet I swear this oath - America will be!”

“Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than anyconception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either intoweak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch theideal at all you must not strip it of vitality. You must find it in life and re-create it in art.”

“There is but one unconditional commandment ... to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.”

“It is by his activities and not by enjoyment that man feels he is alive. In idleness we not only feel that life is fleeting, but we also feel lifeless.”

“Idleness, pleasure, what abysses! To do nothing is a dreary course to take, be sure of it. To live idle upon the substance of society! To be useless, that is to say, noxious! This leads straight to the lowest depth of misery.”