"No man's thoughts are new, but the..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It is said that knowledge is power, and the like. Methinks there is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge.”

“Biography, too, is liable to the same objection; it should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our bowels that we may be somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be?”

“All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.”

“In order to be creative, you don't have to be original.”

“If you simply try to tell the truth you will, nine times out of ten, be original without ever having noticed it.”

“To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else -- these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.”

“The aim of art is to project an inner vision into the world.”

“The speech of my heart will be carried on in murmurings of a song.”

“How many fine thoughts has every man had! How few fine thoughts are expressed!”