Henry David Thoreau

Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for law, so much as a respect for right.

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

That which builds is better than that which is built.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

Only one is a wanderer; two together are always going somewhere.

Which is worse? The wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.

Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.

An honest man is always a child.

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the rest.

We live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature – if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you – know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.

You will have bad times, but they will always wake you up to the stuff you weren’t paying attention to.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

What fugitive from his country can also escape from himself.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.