Henry David Thoreau

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

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.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor 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. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us.

A jest often decides matters of importance more effectual and happily than seriousness.

He who would be a man must therefore be a non-conformist.

When you cannot get a compliment in any other way pay yourself one.

If you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

If you are good, life is good.

To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as mortals.

I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.

This is the foundation of all. We are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to do.

The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.