Henry David Thoreau

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

I was born upon thy bank, river, my blood flows in thy stream, and thou meanderest forever. At the bottom of my dream.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life … would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.

I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.

True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.

It is nobler to be good, and it is nobler to teach others to be good – and less trouble!

The two offices of memory are collection and distribution.

It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy and yet unenvied, to be healthy with physic, secure without a guard, and to obtain from the bounty of nature what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of art.

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

The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.

I don’t like needing anyone for anything.

You are perfect. An exquisitely fine work of art, labor of love, suspended in silence. Bejeweled, trembling, kissed by a breeze, mesmerized by your beauty. You await in silence, beckoning me to a silken-wrapped slumber.

The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace.

Wear none of thine own Chains; but keep free, whilst thou art free.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.

Try not. Do or do not… there is no try.

I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.

At the end of my life, with just one breath left, if you come, I’ll sit up and sing.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.