Henry David Thoreau

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.

It is interesting to observe with what singular unanimity the farthest sundered nations and generations consent to give completeness and roundness to an ancient fable, of which they indistinctly appreciate the beauty or the truth. By a faint and dream-like effort, though it be only by the vote of a scientific body, the dullest posterity slowly add some trait to the mythus. As when astronomers call the lately discovered planet Neptune; or the asteroid Astr.

I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

The most dangerous thing is illusion.

There is this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means; draw it all out, and hold him to it.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

The only way to know is to live, learn, and grow.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.

It is tact that is golden, not silence.

The test of a man or woman’s breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

The glory of friendship is not in the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is in the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.

Love truth, but pardon error.