Henry David Thoreau

The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.

How earthy old people become moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.

The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that free man acknowledges. It is the only security that free man desires.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

Talent for talent’s sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.

What a new face courage puts on everything!

I see the whole concept of Generation X implies that everyone has lost hope.

It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.

For too long I have silenced my heart, that now, when I give it the opportunity to speak, it no longer remembers its voice. Locked away, it forgot what it’s like to be free; to roam. Imprisoned within loneliness, I fear Stockholm syndrome has developed.

Religion is as effectually destroyed by bigotry as by indifference.

He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale.

Fierce eagles do not produce timorous doves.

Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.