Henry David Thoreau

“Things do not change; we change.”

“I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.”

“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.”

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

“All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.”

“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.”

“There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.”

“I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.”

“What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.”

“Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.”

“Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.”

“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

“Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.”

“There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.”

“Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.”

“Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.”

“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”

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

“While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.”

“It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.”

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”

“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.”

“As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.”

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.”