Henry David Thoreau

To inherit property is not to be born – it is to be still-born, rather.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.

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.

We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

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

Plenty of times I wanted to haul off when somebody insulted me for the color of my skin, but I had to hold to myself. I knew I was kind of an experiment. The whole thing was bigger than me.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.

Between us, we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known and I know the rest.

We must train hard. It’s not about denying a weakness may exist but about denying its right to persist.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

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.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.

What I mean is you make the world less ugly just by living in it.

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Then spare the rod and spoil the child.