Henry David Thoreau

The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.

But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.

That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country’s champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest?

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must lay it down and commence living on its hint… What I began by reading I must finish by acting.

One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.

The method of nature: who could ever analyze it?

You show your worth by what you seek! – Rumi

Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.

Pity the man who has a character to support – it is worse than a large family – he is silent poor indeed.

The Pause; that impressive silence, that eloquent silence, that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words, however so felicitous, could accomplish it.

Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.

In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil.

Youth gets together with their materials to build a bridge to the moon or maybe a palace on earth; then in middle age they decide to build a woodshed with them instead.

We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

We are in fact convinced that if we are ever to have pure knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body and contemplate things by themselves with the soul by itself. It seems, to judge from the argument, that the wisdom which we desire and upon which we profess to have set our hearts will be attainable only when we are dead and not in our lifetime.

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

If you would have me weep, you must first of all feel grief yourself.

A man is a god in ruins.