"If I knew for a certainty that..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“But there are spirits of a yet more liberal culture, to whom no simplicity is barren. There are not only stately pines, but fragile flowers, like the orchises, commonly described as too delicate for cultivation, which derive their nutriment from the crudest mass of peat. These remind us, that, not only for strength, but for beauty, the poet must, from time to time, travel the logger's path and the Indian's trail, to drink at some new and more bracing fountain of the Muses, far in the recesses of the wilderness.”

“The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.”

“Winter is the time for study, you know, and the colder it is the more studious we are.”

“Nations do not distrust each other because they are armed. They are armed because they distrust each other.”

“They're gonna make it look like suicide. I know how those bastards think.”

“Always to distrust is an error, as well as always to trust.”

“The administration of government lies in getting proper men. Such men are to be got by means of the ruler's own character. That character is to be cultivated by his treading in the ways of duty. And the treading those ways of duty is to be cultivated by the cherishing of benevolence.”

“What can a man do with music who is not benevolent?”

“To be fond of learning is to draw close to wisdom. To practice with vigor is to draw close to benevolence. To know the sense of shame is to draw close to courage. He who knows these three things knows how to cultivate his own character. Knowing how to cultivate his own character, he knows how to govern other men. Knowing how to govern other men, he knows how to govern the world, its states, and its families.”