Henry David Thoreau

“If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.”

“Men are born to succeed, not to fail.”

“O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment. ”

“Life in us is like the water in a river.”

“I make myself rich by making my wants few.”

“It's circumstantial evidence, like finding a trout in the milk.”

“A man sits as many risks as he runs.”

“It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.”

“They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar”

“The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.”

“I cannot come nearer to God and HeavenThan I live to Walden even.I am its stony shore,And the breeze that passes o'er;In the hollow of my handAre its water and its sand,And its deepest resortLies high in my thought.”

“This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments?”

“Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.”

“When I consider that the nobler animal have been exterminated here - the cougar, the panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, dear, the beaver, the turkey and so forth and so forth, I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed and, as it were, emasculated country... Is it not a maimed and imperfect nature I am conversing with? As if I were to study a tribe of Indians that had lost all it's warriors...I take infinite pains to know all the phenomena of the spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and then, to my chagrin, I hear that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places. I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars. I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth.”

“We are constantly invited to be what we are.”

“Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them. ”

“The greatest art is to shape the quality of the day. ”

“I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next. ”

“I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run. ”

“Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.”

“The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.”

“If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated.”

“There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.”

“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 heart is forever inexperienced.”

“We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been times when our friends' thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be.”

“It matters not where or how far you travel,--the farther commonly the worse,--but how much alive you are.”

“You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.”

“The only remedy for love is to love more.”

“lET HIM MARCH TO THE MUSIC HE HEARS”

“While men believe in the infinite some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.”

“Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.”

“Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.”

“Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.”

“The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.”

“The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.”

“English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets—Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare, included—breathes no quite fresh and, in this sense, wild strain. It is an essentially tame and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. … Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature?...I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this yearning for the Wild....The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine having yielded their crop, it remains to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, the Orinoco, the St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce.”

“Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”

“Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.”

“I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.”

“Even the best things are not equal to their fame.”

“Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits. ”

“We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun,”

“Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.”

“Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.”

“I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.”

“Books which are books are all that you want, and there are but half a dozen in any thousand.”

“What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?”

“All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.”

“Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.”