Henry David Thoreau

Be not simply good – be good for something.

I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. 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. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

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

Those who cross the sea change only the climate, not their character.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books nobody reads.

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.

He has the deed half done who has made a beginning.

The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one’s clothes.

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like as long as somebody loves you.

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.

I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate.

I was a freethinker before I knew how to think.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

I have had to learn that my voice has value. And if I don’t use it, what’s the point of being in the room?