Henry David Thoreau

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life… I wanted to live so sturdily and so Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life… to drive life into a corner to know it by experience and be able to give an account of it in my next excursion.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

I was born upon thy bank, river, my blood flows in thy stream, and thou meanderest forever. At the bottom of my dream.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

Culture is one thing and varnish is another.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.

It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.

Moral of the Work. In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill.

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.

He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not.

Looking? Found someone you have, eh?

Knowledge exists to be imparted.

Gold will be slave or master.

Give, even if you only have little.

You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she’ll be constantly running back.

The only prudence in life is concentration.