Henry David Thoreau

Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.

When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before.

We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.

You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might.

Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

Once we recognize that all things are impermanent, we have no problem enjoying them.

In all debates let truth be thy aim; not victory or an unjust interest; and endeavor to gain rather than to expose thy antagonist.

Though I can make my extravaganzas appear credible, I cannot make the truth appear so.

You show your worth by what you seek! – Rumi

It is proved…that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose.

A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

I simply want to live; to cause no evil to anyone but myself.

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.