Henry David Thoreau

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it come to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts – a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

This American government – what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will.

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.

I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.

Plenty of times I wanted to haul off when somebody insulted me for the color of my skin, but I had to hold to myself. I knew I was kind of an experiment. The whole thing was bigger than me.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

I trust no one, not even myself.

There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.

Not to be provok’d is best: But if mov’d, never correct till the Fume is spent; For every Stroke our Fury strikes, is sure to hit our selves at last.

The measure of a great leader, is their success in bringing everyone around to their opinion twenty years later.

You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she’ll be constantly running back.

We never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead – and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead and then they would be honest so much earlier.