Henry David Thoreau

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

The oldest books are still only just out to those who have not read them.

Whatever our fate is or may be, we have made it and do not complain of it. – Vronksy (Anna Karenina)

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.

Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.

If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.

When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young.

I love books.

Never judge a book by its movie.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.