Great persons are not soon learned, not even their outlines, but they change like the mountains in the horizon as we ride along. - Henry David Thoreau

The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls — the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.

Is not each withered leaf that I see in my walks something which I have traveled to find? —traveled, who can tell how far? What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado is anywhere but where he lives!

Joy and sorrow, success and failure, grandeur and meanness, and indeed most words in the English language do not mean for me what they do for my neighbors.