Henry David Thoreau

How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.

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

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.

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

Was there ever such an autumn? And yet there was never such a panic and hard times in the commercial world. The merchants and banks are suspending and failing all the country over, but not the sandbanks, solid and warm, and streaked with bloody blackberry vines.You may run upon them as much as you please – even as the crickets do, and find their account in it. They are the stockholders in these banks, and I hear them creaking their content.

This American government – what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will.

Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.

Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

You’ll never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sun beams and you will always look lovely!

We’re comic. We’re all comics. We live in a comic time. And the worse it gets the more comic we are.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

The most dangerous thing is illusion.

By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved or undeserved.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

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

Courage: the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.

Begin, be bold and venture to be wise.

A good scare is worth more than good advice.

When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.