Henry David Thoreau

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.

I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?

Man is not weak; knowledge is more than equivalent to force.

The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.

Men’s men: gentle or simple, they’re much of a muchness.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.

A true friend is somebody who can make us do what we can.

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals – this alone is worth the struggle.

Morality is suspecting other people of not being legally married.

The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.

Let us treat the men and women well: treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are.