Henry David Thoreau

I would not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

We feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any pure grief is ample recompense for all. That is, if we are faithful; for a spent grief is but sympathy with the soul that disposes events, and is as natural as the resin of Arabian trees. Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.

Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

There is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning.

What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

We learned about dignity and decency – that how hard you work matters more than how much you make… that helping others means more than just getting ahead yourself.

The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy. It is the only dictator that free man acknowledges. It is the only security that free man desires.

A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning’s greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.

Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravity.

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.

The god of victory is said to be one-handed, but peace gives victory on both sides.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

To be a man’s own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody’s.

Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker upon the planet. Then all things are at risk.

The man of genius inspires us with a boundless confidence in our own powers.