Henry David Thoreau

Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.

We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts. In one direction or another he strives to live a supernatural life.

Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature – if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you – know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.

Hasty resolutions are of the nature of vows, and to be equally avoided

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds – not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but – a hatred of all injury.

If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.

The remedy is worse than the disease.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

It’s the ones that stayed after the Exodus, that I knew were real and could handle the truth; that would stay with me on my journey, for better or worse.

Temperate temperance is best; intemperate temperance injures the cause of temperance.

If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven.

Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.

Friendships begin with liking or gratitude roots that can be pulled up.