"I cannot easily buy a blank-book to..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even,- for that is the seat of sympathy,-he forthwith sets about reforming the world.”

“I have seen some who did not know when to turn aside their eyes in meeting yours. A truly confident and magnanimous spirit is wiser than to contend for the mastery in such encounters. Serpents alone conquer by the steadiness of their gaze. My friend looks me in the face and sees me, that is all.”

“In Canada an ordinary New England house would be mistaken for the château, and while every village here contains at least severalgentlemen or "squires," there is but one to a seigniory.”

“Talent warms-up the given (as they say in cookery) and makes it apparent; genius brings something new. But our time lets talent pass for genius. They want to abolish the genius, deify the genius, and let talent forge ahead.”

“Write drunk; edit sober.”

“I don't pretend to know anything about art. I make pictures for entertainment, and then the professors tell me what they mean.”

“What frightens me is that men are content with what is not life at all.”

“No longer virtuous no longer free; is a Maxim as true with regard to a private Person as a Common-wealth.”

“Let our lives be good, and the times are good. We make our times; such as we are, such are the times.”