Henry David Thoreau

The purity men love is like the mists which envelope the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond.

My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologies. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought – with these I deal.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life… I wanted to live so sturdily and so Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life… to drive life into a corner to know it by experience and be able to give an account of it in my next excursion.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.

We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

Sir, I have no objection to a man’s drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation. I found myself apt to go to excess in it, and therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it. Every man is to judge for himself, according to the effects which he experiences.

Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

I don’t think it’s meant for man to know everything at once.

Tomorrow is always another day to make things right.

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

Your fingers caress my heart strings, shaping a silent sonnet in notes of love. Transcending space and time, bathing the ether in perfect harmony.

The next best thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.

Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

Ignorance… is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.

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

Higher than the question of our duration is the question of our deserving. Immortality will come to such as are fit for it, and he would be a great soul in future must be a great soul now.