Henry David Thoreau

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction,a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse.

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.

How earthy old people become moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.

My finger can point to the moon, but my finger is not the moon. You don’t have to become my finger, nor do you have to worship my finger. You have to forget my finger, and look at where it is pointing.

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.

I am not bound over to swear allegiance to any master; where the storm drives me I turn in for shelter.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it – and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again – and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.

The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

If thou art clean and warm, it is sufficient; for more doth but rob the Poor, and please the Wanton.

A fly may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog’s life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.