Henry David Thoreau

We are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspected.

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully, though I never received payment for it.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone.

What if… everything you are going through is preparing you for what you asked for?

A strenuous soul hates cheap success.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

They say that history repeats itself, so if you don’t learn from the past you will make the same mistakes. So I have become an archaeologist of my own history. Digging up what has long since been buried, exhuming those forgotten fragments. Trying to distinguish what is real from folklore, trying to gain understanding, rather than relying on myths.

We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.

I am neither of the East nor of the West, no boundaries exist within my breast.

We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.

If there is something to gain and nothing to lose by asking, by all means ask!

I am not an optimist, but a great believer of hope.

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

The need for change bulldozed road down the center of my mind.

The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

Many a man’s strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.

We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.