Henry David Thoreau

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

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.

I could not find the world if I searched ten years. I’ve forgotten the road by which I came.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

What you can’t pay back you pay forward.

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion?

For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent: his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil: for without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket; a very few names may be considered as perpetual lamps that shine unconsumed.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

It all depends on you. You can go on sleeping forever, you can wake up right this moment.

Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.

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.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.