Henry David Thoreau

Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it come to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

To him whom contemplates a trait of natural beauty, no harm nor despair can come. The doctrines of despair, spiritual or political servitude, were never taught by those who shared the serenity of Nature. For each phase of Nature, though not invisible, is yet not too distinct or obtrusive. It is there to be found when we look for it, but not too demanding of our attention.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country’s champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest?

This is your time and it feels normal to you but really there is no normal. There’s only change, and resistance to it and then more change.

Never marry but for love; but see that thou lovest what is lovely.

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

He has the deed half done who has made a beginning.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

If you believe in fate, believe in it, at least, for your good.

This is the ultimate end of man, to find the One which is in him; which is his truth, which is his soul; the key with which he opens the gate of the spiritual life, the heavenly kingdom.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

If you wish me to weep, you must first show grief yourself.

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.