Henry David Thoreau

The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as this brain.

It takes two to speak truth – one to speak, and another to hear.

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her.

Some look at things that are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were and ask why not?

I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won’t.

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

Genius Borrows nobly.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

You are alive, so be fully alive.

We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.

A man’s style is his mind’s voice. Wooden minds, wooden voices.

All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of story-tellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.

Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of his character.

Work is always an antidote to depression.