Henry David Thoreau

Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

We should come home from adventures and perils and discoveries with new experiences and character.

One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.

After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

Well, dearie, men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability. But you can’t blame them for that, can you?

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

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

You must get your living by loving, or at least half your life is a failure.

Reality is a sliding door.

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.

What we learn only through the ears makes less impression upon our minds than what is presented to the trustworthy eye.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One’s enough.

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

Logic is like the sword

Do something every day that you don’t want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.