Henry David Thoreau

However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.

We should come home from adventures and perils and discoveries with new experiences and character.

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

Things do not change; we change.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

We hate the kindness which we understand.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

Poverty consist in feeling poor.

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.

To be a citizen in a democracy, a human being must be given a healthy start.

Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.

No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by drinkers of water.

If a man’s fortune does not fit him, it is like the shoe in the story; if too large it trips him up, if too small it pinches him.

Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

How earthy old people become moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Moms. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.

Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.