Henry David Thoreau

Who has not seen in imagination, when looking into the sunset sky, the gardens of the Hesperides, and the foundation of all those fables?

A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it. A township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forest rots below—such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages.

And if the civ­i­lized man’s pur­suits are no wor­thier than the sav­age’s, if he is em­ployed the greater part of his life in ob­tain­ing gross nec­es­saries and com­forts merely, why should he have a bet­ter dwelling than the for­mer?

Per­haps these pages are more par­tic­u­larly ad­dressed to poor stu­dents.

Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is con­demned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they be­gin dig­ging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man’s life, push­ing all these things be­fore them, and get on as well as they can.

The bet­ter part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for com­post. By a seem­ing fate, com­monly called ne­ces­sity, they are em­ployed, as it says in an old book, lay­ing up trea­sures which moth and rust will cor­rupt and thieves break through and steal.

From thence our kind hard­hearted is, en­dur­ing pain and care,
Ap­prov­ing that our bod­ies of a stony na­ture are.”

But alert and healthy na­tures re­mem­ber that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prej­u­dices. No way of think­ing or do­ing, how­ever an­cient, can be trusted with­out proof.

What ev­ery­body echoes or in si­lence passes by as true to­day may turn out to be false­hood to­mor­row, mere smoke of opin­ion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprin­kle fer­til­iz­ing rain on their fields.

Some things are re­ally nec­es­saries of life in some cir­cles, the most help­less and dis­eased, which in oth­ers are lux­u­ries merely, and in oth­ers still are en­tirely un­known