Henry David Thoreau

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

The purity men love is like the mists which envelope the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.

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

The traveler that resolutely follows a rough and winding path will sooner reach the end of his journey than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hour of daylight in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages.

Riches are for spending.

I could have become a soldier if I had waited; I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating.

The sun is but a morning star.

When you know better, you do better.

Live as brave men and face adversity with stout hearts.

This is the foundation of all. We are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to do.

Conversation enriches the understanding; but solitude is the school of genius.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is within and available to you now.

The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.

Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over.

A lawyers dream of heaven; every man reclaimed his property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.

I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.

Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.