Henry David Thoreau

What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day – farther and wider – and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

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

The only wealth is life.

If there be three distinct and separate Persons, then three distinct and separate Substances. . . . And since the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God . . . then unless the Father, Son and Spirit are three distinct Nothings, they must be three distinct Substances, and consequently three distinct Gods.

You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she’ll be constantly running back.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.

I’m like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he’s cold, and his clothes are torn, and he’s ashamed, but he’s not unhappy.

To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Beware what you set your heart upon. For it shall surely be yours.

A picture is a poem without words.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

It is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk.

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

Rebellions of the belly are the worst.

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

Depriving the oppressed of a beacon of hope could lose us the world we have built and thrived in. It could cost our reputation in history as the nation distinct from all others in our achievements, our identity, and our enduring influence on mankind. Our values are central to all three.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.