Henry David Thoreau

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

In the long run you hit only what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high.

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

I was born upon thy bank, river, my blood flows in thy stream, and thou meanderest forever. At the bottom of my dream.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

There is a crack in everything God has made.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

People sleep, and when they die they wake.

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.

Dare to think for yourself.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

Round numbers are always false.

Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

When many demons are struggling inside you, the one that you feed is the one that will become the strongest. You alone are responsible for what you feed.

To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God’s hand, his brain as God’s brain, his purpose as God’s purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.