The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures... I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors... Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it.
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes... If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes.
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Слова Торо - In wilderness is the preservation of the world - стали девизом WWF. Нет пророка в своём отечестве: на родине Торо, в городе Конкорде не слишком верили в его любовь к природе, ибо отправившись однажды со школьным приятелем на пикник, он спалил сотни гектаров леса. Дома он записал в дневнике: "Это было божественное зрелище, и я был единственным, кто получал от него радость".