Henry David Thoreau

He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul’s estate.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

What is once well done is done forever.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.

The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then

The soul is pure when it leaves the body and drags nothing bodily with it, by virtue of having no willing association with the body in life but avoiding it… Practicing philosophy in the right way is a training to die easily.

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

Discord is the great ill of mankind; and tolerance is the only remedy for it.

What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?

Courtesy Life be not so short but that there is always time for courtesy.

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

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.

Nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself, something that encompasses you but is not defined by your existence alone.

Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child’s rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man’s whore.

A good End cannot sanctifie evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it. Some Folks think they may Scold, Rail, Hate, Rob and Kill too; so it be but for God’s sake. But nothing in us unlike him, can please him.

Because they did not see merit where they should have seen it, people, to express their regret, will go and leave a lot of money to the very people who will be the first to throw stones at the next person who has anything to say and finds a difficulty in getting a hearing.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.