"Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We 
 are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men 
 say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a 
 thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow. As for work, 
 we haven't any of any consequence." 

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; 
 but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how 
 shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity 
 remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom 
 is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first 
 letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I 
 was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a 
 cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of 
 things." 

 "The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on the 
  fruits, can be preserved only with the most delicate 
  handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus 
  tenderly."

 "I found in myself, and still find an instinct toward a
  higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, 
  and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I 
  reverence them both.  I love the wild not less than the good."

 "What if all ponds were shallow?  Would it not react on the 
  minds of men?  I am thankful that this pond was made deep 
  and pure for a symbol.  While men believe in the infinite 
  some ponds will be thought to be bottomless."

   -Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Walden (1854)