Henry David Thoreau

The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

There is no remedy for love, but to love more.

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.

The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.

There are many victories worse than a defeat.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

Riches are for spending.

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing –a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.

A lucky person gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they’re about to do and thinks it still matters.

I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten.

These are not dark days: these are great days – the greatest days our country has ever lived.

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

Don’t learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.

There is but one step from the Academy to the Fad.

You are alive, so be fully alive.

Wear none of thine own Chains; but keep free, whilst thou art free.

New arts destroy the old.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.