Henry David Thoreau

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction,a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse.

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.

We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

I know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection; and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is no part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.

We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.

Nothing is so exhilarating in life as to be shot at with no result.

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.

PATIENCE YOU MUST HAVE my young padawan.

All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of story-tellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.

If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.

The hour of departure has arrived and we go our ways; I to die, and you to live. Which is better? Only God knows.

Your mind makes a cruel master, but a generous servant.

Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.

To be furious in religion is to be irreligiously religious.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

Poverty is often concealed in splendor, and often in extravagance. It is the task of many people to conceal their neediness from others. Consequently they support themselves by temporary means, and everyday is lost in contriving for tomorrow.

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.

Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.