Henry David Thoreau

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.

The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.

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

This American government – what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will.

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.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent.

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it – and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again – and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.

George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

Gazing to the south, from the eastern peak, the moon appears through the raindrops.

Society always consists in the greatest part, of young and foolish persons.

You don’t get respect if you don’t deserve it

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.