Henry David Thoreau

I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make use and get advantage of her as I can, as is usual in such cases.

You cannot dream yourself into a character you must hammer and forge yourself into one.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. The friend asks no return but that his friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other’s hopes. They are kind to each other’s dreams.

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.

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.

Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.

For knowledge itself is power.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.

Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame.

One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals.

He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.

Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.

Being is the great explainer.

The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder – in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.

We must not inquire too curiously into motives… They are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light.

It is the privilege of any human work which is well done to invest the doer with a certain haughtiness. He can well afford not to conciliate, whose faithful work will answer for him.

He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he who has a great deal left to him owes to his father’s care.