Henry David Thoreau

I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.

A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

We are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspected.

Do what you love. Know you own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning’s greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.

Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.

The philosopher is Nature’s pilot. And there you have our difference: to be n hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.

It is natural to die as to be born.

Every man’s work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

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

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.

Lest I keep my complacent way I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for?

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Tear thyself from delay.

Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and once it has done so, he/she will have to accept that his life will be radically changed.

In the long run you hit only what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high.