Henry David Thoreau

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.

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others

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

He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice.

As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it.

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.

An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.

If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o clock is a scoundrel.

We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

Anger makes dull men witty – but it keeps them poor.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.