Henry David Thoreau

Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone… I never yet met with, or heard of, a judge who was not a slave of this kind, and so the finest and most unfailing weapon of injustice. He fetches a slightly higher price than the black men only because he is a more valuable slave.

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.

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.

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

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.

There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough.

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it.

If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.

I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle-class morality.

He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

I think I have a good deal of my Uncle Theodore in me, because I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.

It’s a good thing to be foolishly gay once in a while.

The serpent if it wants to become the dragon must eat itself.

How earthy old people become moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.