Henry David Thoreau

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.

The lawyer’s truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.

Sorrow makes us all children again, destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest knows nothing.

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

For death is no more than turning us over from time to eternity.

Events can neither be regarded as a series of adventures nor strung on the thread of a preconceived moral. They must obey their own laws.

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

One can resist the invasion of an army, but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.

We are free to yield to truth.

There is no one who does not exaggerate!

You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.

A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.