Henry David Thoreau

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.

Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It’s thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality.

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

There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.

It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The only prudence in life is concentration.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning.

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.

If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance.

You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can.

The greatest glory in living lies in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

There is always room for a person of force and they make room for many.

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.