Henry David Thoreau

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

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

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

The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another.

Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.

One night awaits all, and death’s path must be trodden once and for all.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.

Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.

The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.

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

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.

The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.

That’s what I can’t stand. I know I’ll bounce back, and that’s what I can’t stand.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself, and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.

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

Believe that each day that shines on you is your last.

Tis God gives skill, but not without men’s hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius’s violins without Antonio.