Henry David Thoreau

Things do not change; we change.

How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

People die of fright and live of confidence.

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by makebelieve.

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.

Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.

The bullsh*t is more interesting than the truth.

I have such a high regard for the truth that I use it sparingly.

Lying rides upon debt’s back.

It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth.’ and so it goes away. Puzzling.

To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.

Do not seek the truth, only cease to cherish your opinions.

It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth… and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

Let them look up in the sky then…! if they must be so blind, that cannot see the truth in broad daylight, but must have the whole world in darkness to see the conceit of the stars…