Henry David Thoreau

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession.

He that gives good advice builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example builds with both.

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

Some people are stuck on who I was that who I am never even had a chance.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.

I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore I bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself: am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny?

The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.

If you employed study, thinking, and planning time daily, you could develop and use the power that can change the course of your destiny.

The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.