Henry David Thoreau

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

There are no grades of vanity, there are only grades of ability in concealing it.

The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul.

Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.

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.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

And deep in my heart. The answer, it was in me. And I made up my mind. To define my own destiny.

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.

I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.

I can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual Belly: feed he must and will, and I cannot make him respectable.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.