Henry David Thoreau

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.

Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Named must your fear be before banish it you can.

The city is recruited from the country.

When you’ve told someone that you’ve left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are evil.

She is but half a wife that is not, nor is capable of being, a friend.

The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.

I was the same old me. Just like the Moon yesterday. But because of all the other factors that came to play, the darkness, the brightness, the blood red color. They all were a reflection, a projection due to the perfect set of circumstances. The Moon was still the Moon. But it was still labeled the Super Blue Blood Moon, Just so we can have some understanding, but, again I’ll state, the Moon was still just the Moon, just like I was still just me. Whatever you project on me, and I reflect back, doesn’t then make me become a new person, it’s just a reflection of your projection. I am still just me.

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.

In the long run you hit only what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high.

Be better. Be better at everything. Be better fathers… Men can be better husbands, which is – be a part of your family’s life. Do the dishes. Don’t babysit your children. You don’t babysit your own children. Be engaged. Don’t just think going to work and coming home makes you a man. Being a father, being engaged, all that stuff is important. Be a better employer. When you are sitting at a seat of power at a table of any kind and you look around you just see you, it’s just you and a bunch of men around a table, on a golf course, making deals, and you allow that to happen, and you’re okay with that – be better.

The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.

You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she’ll be constantly running back.

Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.