Henry David Thoreau

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

The heart is forever inexperienced.

I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful-while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.

It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace.

A joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.

The sense of an entailed disadvantage – the deformed foot doubtfully hidden by the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a self-centered, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite. But in the rarer sort, who presently see their own frustrated claim as one among a myriad, the inexorable sorrow takes the form of fellowship and makes the imagination tender.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.

Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.

Whatever advice you give, be short.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

How great, my friends, is the virtue of living upon a little!

For so many people, TV and movies may be the only way they understand people who aren’t like them. It becomes important for the world to see different images of each other, so that we can develop empathy and understanding.

Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame.

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

There was the cell where Fr. Eulalio, a thriving lunatic of eighty-six who was castigating himself for unchristian pride at having all the vowels in his name, and greatly revered for his continuous weeping, went blind in an ecstasy of such howling proportions that his canonization was assured.

No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.