Henry David Thoreau

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

Things do not change; we change.

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?

The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they know quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.

A healthy body is a guest chamber for the soul: a sick body is a prison.

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.

This is the foundation of all. We are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to do.

Out of the unconscious lips of babes and sucklings are we satirized.

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.

How great, my friends, is the virtue of living upon a little!

Nothing is more important than reconnecting with your bliss. Nothing is as rich. Nothing is more real.

Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. A lady of my acquaintance said, I don’t care so much for what they say as I do for what makes them say it.