As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should… - Henry David Thoreau

... unconsidered expressions of our delight which any natural object draws from us are something complete and final in themselves, since all nature is to be regarded as it concerns man; and who knows how near to absolute truth such unconscious affirmations may come?

Wherever men have lived there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the storyteller or historian whether that is interesting or not.

See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.

What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.