"We are double-edged blades, and every time..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“Everything that is printed and bound in a book contains some echo at least of the best that is in literature.”

“There are more consequences to a shipwreck than the underwriters notice.”

“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”

“I believe that we are fundamentally the same and have the same basic potential.”

“Then also pretexts for seizing property are never wanting, and one who begins to live by rapine will always find some reason for taking the goods of others, whereas causes for taking life are rarer and more quickly destroyed.”

“Man governs himself more by impulse than reason”

“There are many eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and household virtues; there are many that can discern Genius on his starry track, though the mob is incapable; but when that love which is all-suffering, all-abstaining, all-aspiring, which has vowed to itself, that it will be a wretch and also a fool in this world, sooner than soil its white hands by any compliances, comes into our streets and houses,--only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and the only compliment they can pay it, is to own it.”

“[V]irtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”

“Happiness is something final and complete in itself, as being the aim and end of all practical activities whatever .... Happiness then we define as the active exercise of the mind in conformity with perfect goodness or virtue.”