"When I hear a grown man or..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them.”

“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?”

“Not by constraint or severity shall you have access to true wisdom, but by abandonment, and childlike mirth-fulness. If you would know aught, be gay before it.”

“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.”

“In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life - or at least the way life should be.”

“This is the first lesson to learn: be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay the blame upon anyone outside, but stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find that is always true. Get hold of yourself.”

“You know, it's not the world I would have wanted, for sure.”

“My cake is dough, but I'll in among the rest, Out of hope of all but my share of the feast.”

“Maybe the bride-bed brings despair,For each an imagined image bringsAnd finds a real image there...”