"[Water is] the only drink for a wise man."
--Henry David Thoreau
"A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars."
--Henry David Thoreau
"A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double; the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the forepart plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her until you tread on it."
--Henry David Thoreau
"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Wealth
"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Risk
"A man sits as many risks as he runs."
--Henry David Thoreau
"A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure."
--Henry David Thoreau
"A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case."
--Henry David Thoreau
"After the first blush of sin comes its indifference."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something."
--Henry David Thoreau
"All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight to the finish spirit is the one... characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Worth
"All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear."
--Henry David Thoreau
"All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man."
--Henry David Thoreau
"All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong."
--Henry David Thoreau
"An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Conformity
"Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Majority
"Any man more right than his neighbors, constitutes a majority of one."
--Henry David Thoreau
"As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives."
--Henry David Thoreau
"As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution."
--Henry David Thoreau
"As if we could kill time without injuring eternity!"
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Time
"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity."
--Henry David Thoreau
"As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Thought
"Associate reverently, as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Be not simply good - be good for something."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Be not simply good; be good for something."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Truth
"Be true to your work, your word, and your friend."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Being is the great explainer."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Beware of all enterprises that require a new set of clothes."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution --such call I good books."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Don't be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Dreams are the touchstones of our character"
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Dreams
"Dreams are the touchstones of our character."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Fame
"Even the best things are not equal to their fame."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Every man is the builder of a temple called his body."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Doubt
"Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe."
--Henry David Thoreau
"For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Goodness is the only investment that never fails."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them."
--Henry David Thoreau
"He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate."
--Henry David Thoreau
"He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles."
--Henry David Thoreau
"He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human e"
--Henry David Thoreau
"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads."
--Henry David Thoreau
"How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?"
--Henry David Thoreau
"How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it."
--Henry David Thoreau
"How earthy old people become - moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets."
--Henry David Thoreau
"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered."
--Henry David Thoreau
"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book."
--Henry David Thoreau
"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."
--Henry David Thoreau
"However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts."
--Henry David Thoreau
"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."
--Henry David Thoreau
"I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsa"
--Henry David Thoreau
"I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now."
--Henry David Thoreau
"I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Solitude
"I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls."
--Henry David Thoreau
"I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Solitude
"I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will."
--Henry David Thoreau
"I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Letters
"I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage."
--Henry David Thoreau
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor."
--Henry David Thoreau
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Solitude
"I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Solitude
"I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude."
--Henry David Thoreau
"I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn."
--Henry David Thoreau
"I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark."
--Henry David Thoreau
"I respect not his labors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields"
--Henry David Thoreau
"I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Dress
"I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a wearer of new clothes."
--Henry David Thoreau
"I stand in awe of my body."
--Henry David Thoreau
"I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Trust
"I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere."
--Henry David Thoreau
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Vision
"I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision."
--Henry David Thoreau
"I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Solitude
"I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion."
--Henry David Thoreau
"If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?"
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Conformity
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Individuality
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. "
--Henry David Thoreau
"If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music in which he hears, however measured, or far away."
--Henry David Thoreau
"If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen."
--Henry David Thoreau
"If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revol"
--Henry David Thoreau
"If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life."
--Henry David Thoreau
"If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself."
--Henry David Thoreau
"If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I'm sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Misery
"If misery loves company, misery has company enough."
--Henry David Thoreau
"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
--Henry David Thoreau
"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Dream
"If one advances confidently in the directions of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
--Henry David Thoreau
"If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone."
--Henry David Thoreau
"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."
--Henry David Thoreau
"If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Charity
"If you give money, spend yourself with it."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Dream
"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."
--Henry David Thoreau
"If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see."
--Henry David Thoreau
"In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood."
--Henry David Thoreau
"In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high."
--Henry David Thoreau
"In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world."
--Henry David Thoreau
"It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature."
--Henry David Thoreau
"It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Rank
"It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes."
--Henry David Thoreau
"It is never too late to give up our prejudices."
--Henry David Thoreau
"It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right."
--Henry David Thoreau
"It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?"
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Learning
"It is only when we forget out learning that we begin to know."
--Henry David Thoreau
"It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all."
--Henry David Thoreau
"It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive."
--Henry David Thoreau
"It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God."
--Henry David Thoreau
"It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Effort
"It's not enough to be busy. The question is: What are we busy about?"
--Henry David Thoreau
"It's not enough to be busy... the question is: what are we busy about?"
--Henry David Thoreau
"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Law never made men a whit more just."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Live your life, do your work, then take your hat."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Man is the artificer of his own happiness."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Men are born to succeed, not fail."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Men are born to succeed, not to fail."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Superstition
"Men are probably nearer the central truth in their superstitions than in their science."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Men have become the tools of their tools."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Men have become the tools of their trade."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Machine
"Men have become tools of their tools."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Money
"Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."
--Henry David Thoreau
"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."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life."
--Henry David Thoreau
"My friend is one... who take me for what I am."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain."
--Henry David Thoreau
"None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm"
--Henry David Thoreau
"None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him."
--Henry David Thoreau
"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."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Only that day dawns to which we are awake."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Simplicity
"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!"
--Henry David Thoreau
"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."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Pity the man who has a character to support --it is worse than a large family -- he is silent poor indeed."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Politics is the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its opposite halves - sometimes split into quarters - which grind on each other. Not only individuals but states have thus a confirmed dyspepsia."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Poverty
"Poverty ... It is life near the bone, where it is sweetest."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Opinion
"Public opinion is a weak tyrant, compared with our private opinion--what a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates his fate."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Jobs
"Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life as a dog does with his master's chaise. Do what you love; know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Truth
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Reading
"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them all."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it"
--Henry David Thoreau
"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Wealth
"Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!"
--Henry David Thoreau
"Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth."
--Henry David Thoreau
"That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Pleasure
"That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Virtue
"That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The bluebird carries the sky on his back."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way."
--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."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The cost of a things is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument."
--Henry David Thoreau
"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."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The heart is forever inexperienced."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Property
"The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The language of friendship is not words but meanings."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Solitude
"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till the other is ready, and it may be along time before they get off."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Travel
"The man who goes out alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?"
--Henry David Thoreau
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Despair
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation ... A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The only wealth is life."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The perception of beauty is a moral test."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The savage in man is never quite eradicated."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Faith
"The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures."
--Henry David Thoreau
"The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them."
--Henry David Thoreau
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
--Henry David Thoreau
"There is more to life than increasing its speed."
--Henry David Thoreau
"There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living."
--Henry David Thoreau
"There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted."
--Henry David Thoreau
"There is no remedy for love but to love more."
--Henry David Thoreau
"There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect."
--Henry David Thoreau
"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."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Change
"Things do not change, we do."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Things do not change; we change."
--Henry David Thoreau
"This world is but a canvas to our imagination."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Media
"To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, an they who edit and read it are old women over their tea."
--Henry David Thoreau
"To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea."
--Henry David Thoreau
"To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts."
--Henry David Thoreau
"To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour."
--Henry David Thoreau
"To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not"
--Henry David Thoreau
"To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Thought
"To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning."
--Henry David Thoreau
"To inherit property is not to be born -- it is to be still-born, rather."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Inheritance
"To inherit property is not to be born--it is to be still-born, rather. "
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Knowledge
"To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."
--Henry David Thoreau
"To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison."
--Henry David Thoreau
"Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts - a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Suspicion
"We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Vice
"We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice."
--Henry David Thoreau
"We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy."
--Henry David Thoreau
"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"
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Kindness
"We hate the kindness which we understand."
--Henry David Thoreau
"We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend."
--Henry David Thoreau
"We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches."
--Henry David Thoreau
"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."
--Henry David Thoreau
"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Success
"We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success."
--Henry David Thoreau
Topic: Influence
"We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described. "
--Henry David Thoreau
"We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see."
--Henry David Thoreau
"We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."
--Henry David Thoreau
"We were born to succeed, not to fail."
--Henry David Thoreau
"What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook."
--Henry David Thoreau
"What is called genius is the abundance of life and health."
--Henry David Thoreau
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