Henry David Thoreau

The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

If I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior.

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

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.

Adam was but human-this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.

We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected

In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

If men be good, government cannot be bad.

Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender.

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.

As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.

Kings are not born they are made by universal hallucination.

One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. They prefer suffering that is familiar to the unknown.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.