Henry David Thoreau

But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.

The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.

The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.

What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life.

So many fail because they don’t get started – they don’t go. They don’t overcome inertia. They don’t begin.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

If a better system is thine, impart it; if not, make use of mine.

Logic is a poor guide compared with custom.

A good and faithful judge ever prefers the honorable to the expedient.

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap, than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

People only see what they are prepared to see.

In all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of dullness.

I said there was nothing so convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him some time or other.

The country life is to be preferred, for there we see the works of God; but in cities little else but the works of men. And the one makes a better subject for contemplation than the other.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

We’re comic. We’re all comics. We live in a comic time. And the worse it gets the more comic we are.

The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.

God enters by a private door into every individual.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.