I catch myself philosophizing most abstractedly when first returning to consciousness in the night or morning. I make the truest observations and dis… - Henry David Thoreau

Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.

I know many children to whom I would fain make a present on some one of their birthdays, but they are so far gone in the luxury of presents—have such perfect museums of costly ones—that it would absorb my entire earnings for a year to buy them something which would not be beneath their notice.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, to life itself, than this incessant business.