Henry David Thoreau

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must lay it down and commence living on its hint… What I began by reading I must finish by acting.

I heartily accept the motto,That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.

Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.

How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot. The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.

He hates chess. He says it is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something clever when they are only wasting their time.

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

Fidelity is the sister of justice.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

You are braver than you believe. Stronger than you seem. And smarter than you think.

The true artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.

The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.

People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.

Esther liked books out where everyone could see them, a sort of graphic index to the intricate labyrinth of her mind arrayed to impress the most casual guest, a system of immediate introduction which she had found to obtain in a number of grimy intellectual households in Greenwich Village.

We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.

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