Henry David Thoreau

You cannot dream yourself into a character you must hammer and forge yourself into one.

Associate reverently, as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.

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

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life.

Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.

If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault; if they betray you twice, it’s your fault.

What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.

To be in time is to be asleep: to be awake is to be in eternity.

A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

It all depends on you. You can go on sleeping forever, you can wake up right this moment.

The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.

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.

A wise neuter joins with neither, but uses both as his honest interest leads him.

Think with your whole body.

All that appears is devoid of independent existence, just like a magical apparition or a dream.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

No matter how carefully you plan your goals they will never be more than pipe dreams unless you pursue them with gusto.