Henry David Thoreau

The heart is forever inexperienced.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.

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

Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality.

Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

Genius always finds itself a century too early.

Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

Words will not fail when the matter is well considered.

Water is the only drink for a wise man.

The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.

Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.