Henry David Thoreau

We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.

Humility like the darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

It is immoral to get drunk because the headache comes after the drinking, but if the headache came first and the drunkenness afterwards, it would be moral to get drunk.

There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans –which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

The results of life are uncalculated and uncalculable. The years teach much which the days never know. The persons who compose our company, converse, and come and go, and design and execute many things, and somewhat comes of it all, but an unlooked for result. The individual is always mistaken. He designed many things, and drew in other persons as coadjutors, quarrelled with some or all, blundered much, and something is done; all are a little advanced, but the individual is always mistaken. It turns out somewhat new, and very unlike what he promised himself.

All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

A man sits as many risks as he runs.

He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.

Your dreams may have shattered, but that doesn’t mean they are over. They can still be turned into a mosaic of success.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Reality is a sliding door.

Upon awakening, let the words Thank You flow from your lips, for this will remind you to begin your day with gratitude and compassion.

An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.