Henry David Thoreau

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service.

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

In the long run you hit only what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high.

Patience and diligence, like faith, remove mountains.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.

To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God’s hand, his brain as God’s brain, his purpose as God’s purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ.

You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.

Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.

Life is largely a matter of expectation.

If you develop rules, never have more than ten.

He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.

Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.