Henry David Thoreau

The law will never make men free, it is men that have to make the law free.

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.

One farmer says to me, ‘You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;’ and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.

There is still vitality under the winter snow, even though to the casual eye it seems to be dead.

To choose time is to save time.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

An honest man is always a child.

Men who for truth and honor’s sake stand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep. Who dare while others fly.They build a nation’s pillars deep. And lift them to the sky.

It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy – but he who has shown the better temper.

Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and but one tongue-to the end that we should hear and see more than we speak.

Remember, when life’s path is steep, to keep your mind even.

God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.

If a man owns land, the land owns him.

What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing about the origin and destiny of cats?

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

Good sense is both the first principal and the parent source of good writing.