Henry David Thoreau

I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love.

How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.

We feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any pure grief is ample recompense for all. That is, if we are faithful; for a spent grief is but sympathy with the soul that disposes events, and is as natural as the resin of Arabian trees. Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.

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

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

Your playing small does not serve the world. Who are you not to be great?

If you are going through hell, keep going.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

True irreverence is disrespect for another man’s god.

There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you’ll be free if you truly wish to be.

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

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.

To be furious in religion is to be irreligiously religious.

I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.