Henry David Thoreau

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it come to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.

How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.

We are free to yield to truth.

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.

Mysteries are due to secrecy.

The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.

Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.

When any calamity has been suffered, the first thing to be remembered is how much has been escaped.

In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.

Never learn to do anything. If you don’t learn, you will always find someone else to do it for you.

Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated use rather than total abstinence.

I found you essay to be good and original. However, the part that was original was not good and the part that was good was not original.

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