Henry David Thoreau

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

True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are the richest.

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.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

Wherever you are, be there totally.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity to act despite our fears.

There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.

Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

And when a woman’s will is as strong as the man’s who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.

Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.

To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.

But men must know, that in this theatre of man’s life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

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.

The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.

It is necessary to hope… for hope itself is happiness.

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose… only then will you learn the game.