Henry David Thoreau

How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot. The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.

As to conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I have not a very high opinion of that course.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves.

To be a man’s own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody’s.

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.

We had the sky up there, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they was made or just happened.

The resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering.

I think a compliment ought to always precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception.

To himself everyone is an immortal. He may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.

The more experiments you make the better.

Let us try what love will do.

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.

I’ve never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.