Henry David Thoreau

Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.

When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. There is the whole case against censorships in a nutshell.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself.

This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.

You should always own a black dress because no one ever remembers a black dress.

There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.

It is not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong; not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned; and not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.

We bust build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety.

I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.