Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought, go about doing good. - Henry David Thoreau

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.

Our books of science, as they improve in accuracy, are in danger of losing the freshness and vigor and readiness to appreciate the real laws of Nature, which is a marked merit in the oft-times false theories of the ancients.