Henry David Thoreau

I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

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

Be not simply good – be good for something.

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle-class morality.

Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.

Youth gets together with their materials to build a bridge to the moon or maybe a palace on earth; then in middle age they decide to build a woodshed with them instead.

Real love begins when nothing is expected in return.

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

Logic is a poor guide compared with custom.

Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.

I wish for you the wisdom to realize that forgiveness has nothing to do with an apology.

Fatigue makes cowards of us all.

The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity… The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.

The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.