Henry David Thoreau

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for law, so much as a respect for right.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.

New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebody

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm.

Every mind has a choice between truth and repose. Take which you please you can never have both.

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers.

The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbor.

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

They are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot.

I think I have a good deal of my Uncle Theodore in me, because I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on.

During my life, I have had a few nightmares which happened to me while I was wide awake.

You’ve got a big, big problem if you get caught up in what people say. If you’re gonna live for what people say, you might as well lay down and forget it. Because it doesn’t work that way.