Henry David Thoreau

I was born upon thy bank, river, my blood flows in thy stream, and thou meanderest forever. At the bottom of my dream.

I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

It’s your life-but only if you make it so.

The best efforts of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Learn to say “I don’t know.” If used when appropriate, it will be often.

The betrothed and accepted lover has lost the wildest charms of his maiden by her acceptance. She was heaven while he pursued her, but she cannot be heaven if she stoops to one such as he!

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

The only guide to man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender.

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

Many might go to Heaven with half the labor they go to hell.

Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.