Henry David Thoreau

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.

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

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is within and available to you now.

At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.

There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe… the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.

This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

Already know you that which you need.

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

Well, when it comes to social media – there are just times I turn off the world, you know. There are just some times you have to give yourself space to be quiet, which means you’ve got to set those phones down. You can’t be reading all that stuff. I mean, that’s like letting somebody just walk up and slap you, you know? You would never do that. You would never just sit there and go, slap me in the face and I’m good with it. No. So why would you open yourself up to that?

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Standing on the doorstep of desire, I hold this bouquet like a gun and these vows like a petition for the death penalty.

Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.

One cause, which is not always observed, of the insufficiency of riches, is that they very seldom make their owner rich.