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.

Associate reverently, as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.

He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

You have set up in New York Harbor a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete that monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of hell: All hope abandon ye who enter here.

There is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into power.

Rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.

Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

Failure is an important part of your growth and developing resilience. Don’t be afraid to fail.

Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.

I’m not a teacher: only a fellow-traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead – ahead of myself as well as you.

I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.