Henry David Thoreau

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

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

Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.

Any 20 year-old who isn’t a liberal doesn’t have a heart, and any 40 year-old who isn’t a conservative doesn’t have a brain.

The way in which men cling to old institutions after the life has departed out of them, and out of themselves, reminds me of those monkeys which cling by their tails – aye, whose tails contract about the limbs, even the dead limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended beyond the hunter’s reach long after they are dead. It is of no use to argue with such men. They have not an apprehensive intellect, but merely, as it were a prehensile tail.

Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death.

People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.

It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.

Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.

The more experiments you make the better.

He who would begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.

New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody

What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.

Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.