Henry David Thoreau

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution – such call I good books.

I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.

The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.

The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

A jay hasnt got any more principle than a Congressman. A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray; and four times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise.

Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

People of great position are servants times three, servants of their country, servants of fame, and servants of business.

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.

If you want the time to pass quickly, just give your note for 90 days.

He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

Those that are little, little things suit.

If you develop rules, never have more than ten.

If thou wouldst rule well, thou must rule for God; and to do that, thou must be ruled by him who has given to kings his grace to command themselves and their subjects, and to the people the grace to obey God and their kings.

A man who has no office to go to – I don’t care who he is – is a trial of which you can have no conception.