Henry David Thoreau

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

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till the other is ready, and it may be along time before they get off.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.

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

His honest, patronizing pride in the good-will and respect of everybody about him was a safeguard even against foolish romance, still more against a lower kind of folly.

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms.

Character is just another word for having a perfectly disciplined and educated will.

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.

The greatest genius is the most indebted person.

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

The only guide to man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

Don’t call a woman a bitch. Call her an ass-hole. It still gets your point across and it’s not sexist.

Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.