Henry David Thoreau

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.

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

That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country’s champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest?

The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.

Wherever work is done, victory is attained.

Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.

There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought -a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!

The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.

Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss.

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.

Power doesn’t corrupt people; people corrupt power.

The human race was always interesting and we know by its past that it will always continue so, monotonously.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,Here once the embattled farmers stood,And fired the shot heard round the world.