Henry David Thoreau

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life … would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.

Rome – the city of visible history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.

Judged by every standard which history has applied to Governments, the Soviet Government of Russia is one of the worst tyrannies that has ever existed in the world. It accords no political rights. It rules by terror. It punishes political opinions. It suppresses free speech. It tolerates no newspapers but its own. It persecutes Christianity with a zeal and a cunning never equalled since the times of the Roman Emperors. It is engaged at this moment in trampling down the peoples of Georgia and executing their leaders by hundreds.

Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.

During my life, I have had a few nightmares which happened to me while I was wide awake.

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.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. ‘Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

The English never draw a line without blurring it.

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

I don’t need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me.

I do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.

There’s a great joy in my giving. It’s thrilling. It’s exhilarating. It’s important to be a part of sharing. It is my love. It is my joy.

Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.