Henry David Thoreau

I was born upon thy bank, river, my blood flows in thy stream, and thou meanderest forever. At the bottom of my dream.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

Have the fearless attitude of a hero and the loving heart of a child.

What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows – it must grow; nothing can prevent it.

She has lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past?

Our most important task is to transform our consciousness so that violence is no longer an option for us in our personal lives, that understanding that a world of peace is possible only if we relate to each other as peaceful beings, one individual at a time.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

The course of everything goes to teach us faith.

Nothing does Reason more Right, than the Coolness of those that offer it: for Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers.

People who can’t be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

The poets aim is either to profit or to please, or to blend in one the delightful and the useful. Whatever the lesson you would convey, be brief, that your hearers may catch quickly what is said and faithfully retain it. Every superfluous word is spilled from the too-full memory.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

A lot of power and bravery is practice. And some of that is taking the risk to try and be at the table. And then when you’re at the table, taking that first risk to open your mouth and risk being rejected.

Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.