Henry David Thoreau

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

Do what you know and perception is converted into character.

The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms.

Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means – one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies.

In nature nothing can be given. All things are sold.

When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

Hate has caused a lot of problems in this world, but it has not solved one yet.

The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.

Friends are thieves of time.

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.