Henry David Thoreau

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

Be not simply good – be good for something.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass.

He is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others.

A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil that good may come of it.

If you are good, life is good.

There is but one step from the Academy to the Fad.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

He tosses aside his paint-pots and his words a foot and a half long.

All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.

Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual; you have an obligation to be one. You cannot make any useful contribution in life unless you do this.