Henry David Thoreau

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.

The lawyer’s truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

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.

Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.

Revolutions go not backward.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.

This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

Remember where you came from.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.

Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.

A man’s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential – there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost. It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.