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.

If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I’m sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction,a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse.

Out of love and hatred, out of earnings and borrowings and leadings and losses; out of sickness and pain; out of wooing and worshipping; out of traveling and voting and watching and caring; out of disgrace and contempt, comes our tuition in the serene and beautiful laws.

Be a lamp, a lifeboat, a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing –a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.

Moral of the Work. In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill.

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.

When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn’t got any.

A virtue to be serviceable must, like gold, be alloyed with some commoner, but more durable alloy.

Sense never fails to give them that have it, Words enough to make them understood. It too often happens in some conversations, as in Apothecary Shops, that those Pots that are Empty, or have Things of small Value in them, are as gaudily Dress’d as those that are full of precious Drugs. They that soar too high, often fall hard, making a low and level Dwelling preferable. The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune. Buildings have need of a good Foundation, that lie so much exposed to the Weather.

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.

By his father he is English, by his mother he is Americanto my mind the blend which makes the perfect man.

The Humble, Meek, Merciful, Just, Pious and Devout Souls, are everywhere of one religion; and when Death has taken off the Mask, they will know one another, though the divers Liveries they wear here make them Strangers.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

A jest often decides matters of importance more effectual and happily than seriousness.