Henry David Thoreau

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

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Do what you know and perception is converted into character.

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?

If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I’m sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.

The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself.

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

No matter how carefully you plan your goals they will never be more than pipe dreams unless you pursue them with gusto.

My liver swells with bile difficult to repress.

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.

That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility.