Henry David Thoreau

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

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.

We live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.

It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will for their own safety and for the good of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in peace.

Revolutions go not backward.

How hard you work matters more than how much you make.

He hates chess. He says it is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something clever when they are only wasting their time.

You see things; and you say Why? But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not?

Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

Without a measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.

The time has come to shed this skin. Its cloying inconvenience doesn’t fit me anymore. My new attire strikes color, shine, shadow, makes noise, and may put your teeth on edge. Tough sh–. Get used to it. I’m inviting you to step into your fear and dance with life.

The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.

We don’t want people to have expectations of us, but then we have expectations of everybody else.

There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep.

Our own life has to be our message.

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

The desire of advising has a very extensive prevalence; and, since advice cannot be given but to those that will hear it, a patient listener is necessary to the accommodation of all those who desire to be confirmed in the opinion of their own wisdom: a patient listener, however, is not always to be had; the present age, whatever age is present, is so vitiated and disordered, that young people are readier to talk than to attend, and good counsel is only thrown away upon those who are full of their own perfections.