Henry David Thoreau

Associate reverently, as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man, you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.

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

We are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspected.

A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.

To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God’s hand, his brain as God’s brain, his purpose as God’s purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

There are only two forces that can carry light to all the corners of the globe… the sun in the heavens and the Associated Press down here.

You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time, of that time which never can return.

Stress is caused by being here but wanting to be there.

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.

It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend.

Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?

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

I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.