Henry David Thoreau

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.

As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

Every mind has a choice between truth and repose. Take which you please you can never have both.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works and of greatest merit for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men, which both in affection and means have married and endowed the public. He was reputed one of the wise men that made answer to the question, when a man should marryA young man not yet, an elder man not at all.

Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

Our most important task is to transform our consciousness so that violence is no longer an option for us in our personal lives, that understanding that a world of peace is possible only if we relate to each other as peaceful beings, one individual at a time.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Sir, I have found you an argument. I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.

You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices.

Sorrow is the rust of the soul and activity will cleanse and brighten it.

What is once well done is done forever.

Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.

Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.

Familiarity breeds contempt and children.