Henry David Thoreau

You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might.

It takes two to speak truth – one to speak, and another to hear.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake . . . by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I’m sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle-class morality.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

As the physically weak man can make himself strong by careful and patient training, so the man of weak thoughts can make them strong by exercising himself in right thinking.

We all have our challenges, issues, things that we’re working through and insecurity is there because nobody is perfect no matter who you are. It’s that imperfection that makes you so dope.

Dear to us are those who love us… but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life; they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances.

As the births of living creatures, at first, are ill-shapen: so are all Innovations, which are the births of time.

Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravity.

In all our contacts it is probably the sense of being really needed and wanted which gives us the greatest satisfaction and creates the most lasting bond.

It is a severe Rebuke upon us, that God makes us so many Allowances, and we make so few to our Neighbor: As if Charity had nothing to do with Religion; Or Love with Faith, that ought to work by it.

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

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.