Henry David Thoreau

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.

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.

Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.

Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

Men have become the tools of their trade.

We are free to yield to truth.

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

Your dreams may have shattered, but that doesn’t mean they are over. They can still be turned into a mosaic of success.

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.

The man who forgives is far stronger than the man who fights.

Few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

If a man owns land, the land owns him.

The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.