Henry David Thoreau

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet, drink, and botanical medicines.

He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, Know thyself, and too often leads to a self-estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.

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.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

Only trust theyself, and another shall noet betray thee

We must substitute courage for caution.

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Sir Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he would have had an easier task than the historian at least in this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of change –only to give stability to one beautiful moment.

I’m like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he’s cold, and his clothes are torn, and he’s ashamed, but he’s not unhappy.

Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.

The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy. Collect and learn them; they are notable measures of directions for human life; you have much in little; they save time in speaking; and upon occasion may be the fullest and safest answer.

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.