Henry David Thoreau

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

A blind man knows he cannot see, and is glad to be led, though it be by a dog; but he that is blind in his understanding, which is the worst blindness of all, believes he sees as the best, and scorns a guide.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.

The greatest glory in living lies in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

If thou wouldst rule well, thou must rule for God; and to do that, thou must be ruled by him who has given to kings his grace to command themselves and their subjects, and to the people the grace to obey God and their kings.

By law of periodical repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again and again – and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each thing in its own period, not another’s and each obeying its own law.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

Shallow people believe in luck and in circumstances; Strong people believe in cause and effect.

There is still vitality under the winter snow, even though to the casual eye it seems to be dead.

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

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like as long as somebody loves you.

The eagle has ceased to scream, but the parrots will now begin to chatter. The war of the giants is over and the pigmies will now start to squabble.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

They say that history repeats itself, so if you don’t learn from the past you will make the same mistakes. So I have become an archaeologist of my own history. Digging up what has long since been buried, exhuming those forgotten fragments. Trying to distinguish what is real from folklore, trying to gain understanding, rather than relying on myths.