Henry David Thoreau

Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

We live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

Water is the only drink for a wise man.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

The first wealth is health.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.

The purity men love is like the mists which envelope the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.

Time will bring to light whatever is hidden; it will cover up and conceal what is now shining in splendor.

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

We don’t want people to have expectations of us, but then we have expectations of everybody else.

Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

I always forgive others. The anger; sadness; frustration; pain, whatever feelings I felt, no matter the hurt; the tears, I always found understanding and reason to forgive them; to not hold onto it; to not resent them. But there is one, who I never seem to be able to give absolution, and that’s myself.

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.