Henry David Thoreau

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

Things do not change; we change.

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully, though I never received payment for it.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity. The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

Don’t think of yourself as indispensable or infallible. As Charles De Gaulle said, the cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.

I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

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

The disciplined are free.

You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Analyze your life in terms of its environment. Are the things around you helping you toward success – or are they holding you back?

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him.

Death then, being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live if we cannot bear to die.

My life is a struggle.

No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.

To be mature you have to realize what you value most… Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one’s own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for.