Henry David Thoreau

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. The friend asks no return but that his friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other’s hopes. They are kind to each other’s dreams.

Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

Lilac anemone, paper petals, turning tentatively to face a pale sun opening to reveal a lightness of being, a flash of gold, a fresh resilience, contented silence, the dawn of a new day.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

The real satisfaction which praise can afford, is when what is repeated aloud agrees with the whispers of conscience, by showing us that we have not endeavored to deserve well in vain.

The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give.

Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.

I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.

To choose time is to save time.

Justice is the insurance which we have on our lives and property. Obedience is the premium which we pay for it.

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

Unconsciously we all have a standard by which we measure other men, and if we examine closely we find that this standard is a very simple one, and is this: we admire them, we envy them, for great qualities we ourselves lack. Hero worship consists in just that. Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret, and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

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