Henry David Thoreau

Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

Pity the man who has a character to support – it is worse than a large family – he is silent poor indeed.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

The law will never make men free, it is men that have to make the law free.

Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

For my name and memory I leave to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.

It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies.

I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.

Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget…

The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.

He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words – 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man – the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

When you’ve told someone that you’ve left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.