Henry David Thoreau

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

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.

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, an they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.

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

Even the best things are not equal to their fame.

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

By law of periodical repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again and again – and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each thing in its own period, not another’s and each obeying its own law.

I’ve never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

The report of my death was an exaggeration.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.

I heartily accept the motto,That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gongthese are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.

One little bird not larger than a sparrow, it may have been a Phalarope, would alight on the turbulent surface where the breakers were five or six feet high, and float buoyantly there like a duck, cunningly taking to its wings and lifting itself a few feet through the air over the foaming crest of each breaker, but sometimes outriding safely a considerable billow which hid it some seconds, when its instinct told it that it would not break. It was a little creature thus to sport with the ocean, but it was as perfect a success in its way as the breakers in theirs.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they’re gone.