Henry David Thoreau

Was there ever such an autumn? And yet there was never such a panic and hard times in the commercial world. The merchants and banks are suspending and failing all the country over, but not the sandbanks, solid and warm, and streaked with bloody blackberry vines.You may run upon them as much as you please – even as the crickets do, and find their account in it. They are the stockholders in these banks, and I hear them creaking their content.

We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

One little bird not larger than a sparrow, it may have been a Phalarope, would alight on the turbulent surface where the breakers were five or six feet high, and float buoyantly there like a duck, cunningly taking to its wings and lifting itself a few feet through the air over the foaming crest of each breaker, but sometimes outriding safely a considerable billow which hid it some seconds, when its instinct told it that it would not break. It was a little creature thus to sport with the ocean, but it was as perfect a success in its way as the breakers in theirs.

You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can.

You cannot dream yourself into a character you must hammer and forge yourself into one.

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

Ahh, that mountain of self-discovery. Every time you have reached the summit, the clouds clear and you see there is still a ways to go. Don’t look up with thoughts of despair; thinking how much further do I have to go?! Take a moment and look back to see how far you have come. Don’t lose sight of your accomplishments, and focus on the continued commitment to self-discovery and development.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.

The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.

Sir, a man may be so much of everything, that he is nothing of anything.

The universe is wider than our views of it.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

Events tend to recur in cycles…

In a man’s letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.

It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him.

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.

Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time.