Henry David Thoreau

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.

We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit – not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviate from their graves.

A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

It is interesting to observe with what singular unanimity the farthest sundered nations and generations consent to give completeness and roundness to an ancient fable, of which they indistinctly appreciate the beauty or the truth. By a faint and dream-like effort, though it be only by the vote of a scientific body, the dullest posterity slowly add some trait to the mythus. As when astronomers call the lately discovered planet Neptune; or the asteroid Astr.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

The foolish are like ripples on water, For whatsoever they do is quickly effaced; But the righteous are like carvings upon stone, For their smallest act is durable.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.

Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; for causes which are unpenetrated.

For character too is a process and an unfolding… among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protuberant there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.

You’ve got to have a good spirit on the inside. That’s what’s really going to make you look like you’re ready to rock the world.

A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.