Henry David Thoreau

Do what you love. Know you own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.

I respect not his labors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars.

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

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

The roses under my window make no reference to former roses or better ones; they are what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I don’t think it’s meant for man to know everything at once.

All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

My emancipation don’t fit your equation.

I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore there be any kindness I can show…let me do it now.- William Penn

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won’t fatten the dog.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.

All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind.

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.