Henry David Thoreau

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

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.

The eye is the jewel of the body.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.

Drunkenness spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans man. It reveals secrets, is quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous, and mad.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men – that is genius.

Standing beneath this immense, bejeweled, star-spangled dome, breathing in its life, boundaries fall away, possibilities open up and my wings unfold. And I thought that you were the one who was the angel.

The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness.

Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.

He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

It the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

The more you know, the less you need.

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

Republics abound in young civilians who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of living and employments of the population, that commerce, education and religion may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; that the form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum.

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.

Friendship is the next Pleasure we may hope for: And where we find it not at home, or have no home to find it in, we may seek it abroad. It is an Union of Spirits, a Marriage of Hearts, and the Bond thereof Vertue.

To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel. Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.