Date: 1854

"They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay."

— Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Date: 1854

"Patriotism is a maggot in their heads."

— Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Date: 1854

"What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many tho...

— Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Date: 1854

"The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels."

— Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Date: 1854

"While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?"

— Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Date: 1854

"And now he saw by the heap of shavings still fresh at his feet, that, for him and his work, the former lapse of time had been an illusion, and that no more time had elapsed than is required for a single scintillation from the brain of Brahma to fall on and inflame the tinder of a mortal brain."

— Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Date: 1855

"This is the tasteless water of souls .... this the true sustenance."

— Whitman, Walt (1819-1892)

Date: 1858

"His faculties were so well balanced and combined, that his constitution, free from excess, was tempered evenly with all the elements of activity, and his mind resembled a well-ordered commonwealth."

— Bancroft, George (1800-1891)

Date: 1862

"Successful minds work like a gimlet -- to a single point."

— Christian Nestell Bovee (1820-1904)

Date: c. 1862

"After great pain, a formal feeling comes -- / The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs -- / The stiff Heart questions 'was it He, that bore,' / And 'Yesterday, or Centuries before'?"

— Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886)