Henry David Thoreau

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.

Bravery is more important than perfection.- Kanye West

The soul is pure when it leaves the body and drags nothing bodily with it, by virtue of having no willing association with the body in life but avoiding it… Practicing philosophy in the right way is a training to die easily.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one’s self?

It is only through labour and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage; that we move on to better things.

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

I have lived with several Zen masters – all of them cats.

When one wanted one’s interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people’s tricks.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

God’s first creature, which was light.

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

You bring out the be(a)st in me. Polarized tension, a raw slash of claw, swathed softly in love. A peace of my mind in tumultuous chaotic razor-sharp clarity, impulsive wit to wisdom, mixing addictive shots of cocktail emotions in a full-spectrum experience.

It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. Many will read the book before one thinks of quoting a passage. As soon as he has done this, that line will be quoted east and west.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.