Henry David Thoreau

He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul’s estate.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limit of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced. Extravagance! it depends on how you are yarded.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.

The way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.

Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.

You cannot run faster than a bullet.

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some area of native land where it may get the love of tender kinship from the earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one’s own homestead.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it.

In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the moralities.

When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.

There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.

By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little, you gain the great.

I was brought up to hate and fear liberty. I came to love it. That is the secret of my whole career.

If we are but sure the end is right, we are too apt to gallop over all bounds to compass it; not considering the lawful ends may be very unlawfully attained.

When the eye is not set on one leaf and you face the tree with nothing in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye.