A truly good book…teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down and commence living on its hint. When I read an indifferent book, it see… - Henry David Thoreau

The Hindoos are most serenely and thoughtfully religious than the Hebrews. They have perhaps a purer, more independent and impersonal knowledge of God. Their religious books describe the first inquisitive and contemplative access to God; the Hebrew bible a conscientious return, a grosser and more personal repentance. Repentance is not a free and fair highway to God. A wise man will dispense with repentance. It is shocking and passionate. God prefers that you approach him thoughtful, not penitent, though you are chief of sinners. It is only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to him. The calmness and gentleness with which the Hindoo philosophers approach and discourse on forbidden themes is admirable.

It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling leaves. How beautifully they go to their graves! how gently lay themselves down and turn to mould! —painted of a thousand hues, and fit to make the beds of the living. So they troop to their last resting-place, light and frisky.

I cannot but think it nobler, as it is rarer, to appreciate some beauty than to feel much sympathy with misfortune.