Henry David Thoreau

Humility like the darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.

He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

We live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked what I thought, and attended to my answer.

True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.

You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist’s custom.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

Don’t think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.

When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.

When the desire ain’t on me I don’t need help. When it is on me I don’t want any. See? Like the old fellah that never mended his roof. Said on a wet day he couldn’t do it and on a dry day it was as good as anybody’s.

Amidst all the clutter, beyond all the obstacles, aside from all the static, are the goals set. Put your head down, do the best job possible, let the flak pass, and work towards those goals.

Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale.

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.

A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.

The hottest love has the coldest end.