Substantive Quotes

Remember in school, English class, when, in the normal course of reading passages in turn, you came across one you knew was bigger than the rest? "wherefore art thou, Romeo?" "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"... I could go on, maybe, but submit yours via the comments. Anyway...

I came across one of the biggies the other day:

I went to the wods because I wanted to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived....I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life... -H.D. Thoreau

But he had already done himself one better. Here, on the limits of philanthropy

I do not value chiefly a man's uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is charity that hides a multitude of sins.