Henry David Thoreau

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel. Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.

Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love.

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.

When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs. I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked what I thought, and attended to my answer.

He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

One thing life has taught me: if you are interested, you never have to look for new interests. They come to you. When you are genuinely interested in one thing, it will always lead to something else.

There was the cell where Fr. Eulalio, a thriving lunatic of eighty-six who was castigating himself for unchristian pride at having all the vowels in his name, and greatly revered for his continuous weeping, went blind in an ecstasy of such howling proportions that his canonization was assured.

Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.

It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.

Important encounters are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other.

Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.

Our own life has to be our message.

Many heroes lived before Agamemnon; but all are unknown and unwept, extinguished in everlasting night, because they have no spirited chronicler.

Part of her mystery is how she is calm in the storm and anxious in the quiet.

It is always from a minority acting in ways different from what the majority would prescribe that the majority in the end learns to do better.

Wherever there is power there is age.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher.