Henry David Thoreau

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution – such call I good books.

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.

Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?

Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.

The report of my death was an exaggeration.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

God’s first creature, which was light.

We don’t want people to have expectations of us, but then we have expectations of everybody else.

He was doing missionary work. But from the outset he had little success in convincing his charges of their responsibility for a sin committed at the beginning of creation, one which, as they understood it, they were ready and capable (indeed, they carried charms to assure it) of duplicating themselves. He did no better convincing them that a man had died on a tree to save them all: an act which one old Indian, if Gwyon had translated correctly, regarded as “rank presumption”.

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

I answer the heroic question Death where is thy sting? It is here in my heart and mind and memories

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap, than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.

Undeservedly you will atone for the sins of your fathers.

How can you dare teach a man to read until you’ve taught him everything else first?

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.

The trouble with you Chicago people is that you think you are the best people down here, whereas you are merely the most numerous.

I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.