Henry David Thoreau

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

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

If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

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

A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.

We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.

For my name and memory I leave to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.

Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.

It is impossible for a man to be cheated by anyone but himself.

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.

We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass.

Once I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: No good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.

Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.

Kings in this should imitate God, their mercy should be above their works.

Each thought is a nail that is driven In structures that cannot decay; And the mansion at last will be given To us as we build it each day.

Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.

What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey.

Every person is a God in embryo. Its only desire is to be born.

The universe is wider than our views of it.