Henry David Thoreau

It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.

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

Was there ever such an autumn? And yet there was never such a panic and hard times in the commercial world. The merchants and banks are suspending and failing all the country over, but not the sandbanks, solid and warm, and streaked with bloody blackberry vines.You may run upon them as much as you please – even as the crickets do, and find their account in it. They are the stockholders in these banks, and I hear them creaking their content.

If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.

After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.

Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.

We have only now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.

There is no one who does not exaggerate!

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

We never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead – and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead and then they would be honest so much earlier.

Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

Lest I keep my complacent way I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for?

God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.

Whatever advice you give, be short.

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

Say what you have to say and first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending; sit down.

Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.

Bravery is more important than perfection.- Kanye West