Henry David Thoreau

Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

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.

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

Youth is unduly busy with pampering the outer person.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

I desire to gain your Love and Friendship by a kind, Just and Peaceful Life.

Compound for sins they are inclined to by damning those they have no mind to.

I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore I bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself: am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny?

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

Responsibilities are given to him on whom trust rests. Responsibility is always a sign of trust.

Your mind makes a cruel master, but a generous servant.

Hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, Corn-Pone stands for Self-Approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.

The stars are the apexes of what triangles!

Perhaps his might be one of the natures where a wise estimate of consequences is fused in the fires of that passionate belief which determines the consequences it believes in.

When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.

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