Henry David Thoreau

You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might.

The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?

I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.

Being is the great explainer.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

What you can’t pay back you pay forward.

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.

Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence. The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote, Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being.

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

The camera can represent flesh so superbly that, if I dared, I would never photograph a figure without asking that figure to take its clothes off.

Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right and stick to it.

Sympathetic people often don’t communicate well, they back reflected images which hide their own depths.

They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.

I’ve also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you but his eyes stay the same. It’s sure to be a phony.

Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.