Henry David Thoreau

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

Go Confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

All good things are wild, and free.

It is pleasant to have been to a place the way a river went.

In wilderness is the preservation of the world.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish fill the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

What men call good fellowship is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm.

I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman simply because she has regular features.

Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

We don’t ride on the railroad; it rides on us.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness.

(The American government) is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves.

If (the law) is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong.

It matters not how small the beginning may seem to be; what is once well done is done forever.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake.

Men have become the tools of their tools

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.

Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize the infinite extent of our relations.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

Water is the only drink for a wise man.

It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

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

There is more religion in men's science, than there is science in their religion.

To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, not even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.

A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

It takes two to speak the truth--one to speak and the other to hear.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

I have learned this at least by my experiment: 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.

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

I have lived some thirty years on this planet and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

In solitude especially do we begin to appreciate the advantage of living with someone who can think.

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, more elastic, more starry, more immortal--that is your success.

It is never too late to give up your prejudices.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.

I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.

I'd rather sit alone on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

Many go fishing without knowing it is fish they are after.

In the long run, you hit only what you aim at: Therefore aim high.

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake.

Petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of reality.

Heroes are often the most ordinary of men.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

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

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

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

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.

I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.

Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live, as well as to think.

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practicing every day while they live.

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

The next thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.

Insist on yourself; never imitate... Every great man is unique.

Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him.

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon-balls and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experience.

We aim above the mark to hit the mark.

Talent finds its models, methods, and ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within.

Always do what you are afraid to do.

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Society everywhere is in a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.

My life is for itself and not a spectacle.

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

(Books) are for nothing but to inspire.

So far as a man thinks, he is free.