Henry David Thoreau

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.

One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then

The universe is wider than our views of it.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!

How can what an Englishman believes be hearsay? It is a contradiction in terms.

That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often.

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

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

I hate the giving of the hand unless the whole man accompanies it.

The time has come to shed this skin. Its cloying inconvenience doesn’t fit me anymore. My new attire strikes color, shine, shadow, makes noise, and may put your teeth on edge. Tough sh–. Get used to it. I’m inviting you to step into your fear and dance with life.

The sky was the color of hard crimson, dripping down a canvas, the moon splashed silver across red. Her soothing balm healing my soul in swathes of calmness, I breathe in her tides and let my body be washed ashore, lying in the sands of eternity.

Wickedness is always easier than virtue, for it takes a short cut to everything.

Life is a festival only to the wise.

Lilac anemone, paper petals, turning tentatively to face a pale sun opening to reveal a lightness of being, a flash of gold, a fresh resilience, contented silence, the dawn of a new day.

All those moments are alive in us today. We may not visit them anymore, very often, but we carry them in our DNA, our blood, our bones; informing the breadth and beauty of who we now are; our lesson to be lived.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Your fingers caress my heart strings, shaping a silent sonnet in notes of love. Transcending space and time, bathing the ether in perfect harmony.