Henry David Thoreau

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.

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

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

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life … would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

Say a word, say a thousand to me on the telephone and I shall choose the wrong one to cling to as though you had said it after long deliberation when only I provoked it from you, I will cling to it from among a thousand, to be provoked and hurl it back with something I mean no more than you meant that, something for you to cling to and retreat clinging to.

As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep and never to refrain when awake.

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit – not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviate from their graves.

We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.

The desire of advising has a very extensive prevalence; and, since advice cannot be given but to those that will hear it, a patient listener is necessary to the accommodation of all those who desire to be confirmed in the opinion of their own wisdom: a patient listener, however, is not always to be had; the present age, whatever age is present, is so vitiated and disordered, that young people are readier to talk than to attend, and good counsel is only thrown away upon those who are full of their own perfections.

A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as this brain.

Let your character be kept up the very end, just as it began, and so be consistent.

Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused; when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

To inherit property is not to be born – it is to be still-born, rather.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

Excellence must be pursued, it must be wooed with all of one’s might and every bit of effort that we have each day there’s a new encounter, each week is a new challenge.

Stay at home in your mind. Don’t recite other people’s opinions. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.