Henry David Thoreau
I often visited a particular plant four or five miles distant, half a dozen times within a fortnight, that I might know exactly when it opened.
Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.
I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.
If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?
Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.
It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.
There is no just and serene criticism as yet.
In the meanest are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly disposed.
Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.
The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.
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.
Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.
How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.
It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
Live the life you've dreamed.
That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.
Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.
Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don't destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!Collection: Struggle
It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.Collection: Looks
Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.Collection: Thinking Of You
Life isn't about finding yourself; it's about creating yourself. So live the life you imagined.Collection: Live Life
Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.Collection: Couple
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined...Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Life
To have made even one person's life a little better, that is to succeed.Collection: Littles
The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost.Collection: People
It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning.Collection: Men
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.Collection: Nature
Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.Collection: Greatness
The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.Collection: Fishing
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.Collection: Love
We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain.Collection: Rain
Dissent without action is consent.Collection: Action
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.Collection: Life
I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus.Collection: Love
All that man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love-to sing, and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love.Collection: Love