Henry David Thoreau

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful-while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly.

Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality.

We live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are the richest.

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.

In traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.

You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she’ll be constantly running back.

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

It were endless to dispute upon everything that is disputable.

Every woman wants to be first to someone sometime in her life and that desire is the explanation for many strange things women do.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.

City life is millions of people being lonesome together.

Regardless of who you are or what you have been, you can be what you want to be.

Human ‘beans’ is the only animals that is killing their own kind.

I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won’t.

When I look back on all the worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.

In the scenery of spring, nothing is better, nothing worse; the flowering branches are; some long, some short.

Follow your own passion – not your parents’, not your teachers’- yours.