Henry David Thoreau

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

Associate reverently, as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it come to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.

You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.

There is nothing assured to mortals.

Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.

Their learning is like bread in a besieged town: every man gets a little, but no man gets a full meal.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.

The only reward of virtue is virtue the only way to have a friend is to be one.

I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.

He is a modest little man who has a good deal to be modest about.

Looking? Found someone you have, eh?

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things.

Sense shines with a double luster when it is set in humility. An able yet humble man is a jewel worth a kingdom.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.