Henry David Thoreau

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs. I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor.

A man’s style is his mind’s voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good;be good for something.All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story. Let nothing come between you and the light. Respect men and brothers only. When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God,

Sense never fails to give them that have it, Words enough to make them understood. It too often happens in some conversations, as in Apothecary Shops, that those Pots that are Empty, or have Things of small Value in them, are as gaudily Dress’d as those that are full of precious Drugs. They that soar too high, often fall hard, making a low and level Dwelling preferable. The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune. Buildings have need of a good Foundation, that lie so much exposed to the Weather.

Private men, in fine, are so much their own, that, paying common dues, they are sovereigns of all the rest. Yet the public must and will be served; and they that do it well, deserve public marks of honour and respect. To do so, men must have public minds, as well as salaries; or they will serve private ends at the public cost. Government can never be well administered, but where those intrusted make conscience of well discharging their places.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn’t.

You don’t learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking and getting well hammered yourself.

It took me twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public.

Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.