Henry David Thoreau

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

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

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

There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.

Youth gets together with their materials to build a bridge to the moon or maybe a palace on earth; then in middle age they decide to build a woodshed with them instead.

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.

The intuitive recognition of the instant, thus reality… is the highest act of wisdom.

We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground.

I’m like a starving man who has been given food. Maybe he’s cold, and his clothes are torn, and he’s ashamed, but he’s not unhappy.

Every old poem is sacred.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

It is easier to stay out than get out.

In charity there is no excess.

Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.

I look up at the universe and ask, ‘What are you trying to teach me here?’ I know I won’t hear a reply, but asking the question, makes me begin looking for the answer.

There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.

I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them.