Henry David Thoreau

I would not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces of those who live in true meekness.

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.

Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; for causes which are unpenetrated.

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman for ever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer –committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.

Oh man! There is no planet sun or star could hold you, if you but knew what you are.

We are always getting ready to live but never living.

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.

Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are.

All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.

We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together, and if we are to live together we have to talk.

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

So different are the colors of life, as we look forward to the future, or backward to the past; and so different the opinions and sentiments which this contrariety of appearance naturally produces, that the conversation of the old and young ends generally with contempt or pity on either side.

Defeat in itself was part and parcel of the great gambling game of politics. A man who could not accept it and try again was not of the stuff of which leaders are made.

If a man sits down to think, he is immediately asked if has a headache.