Henry David Thoreau

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

Today is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again.

Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.

I encourage you to live with life. Be courageous, adventurous. Give us a tomorrow, more than we deserve.

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.

All problems are finally scientific problems.

Union may be strength, but it is mere blind brute strength unless wisely directed.

At the end of my life, with just one breath left, if you come, I’ll sit up and sing.

A man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes, nor by violent possibilities, by refusing to swear, refusing to pay taxes, by going to jail, or by taking another man’s crops or squatting on his land. By none of these ways can he free himself; no, nor by paying his debts with money; only by obedience to his own genius.

It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.

Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.

Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.