Henry David Thoreau

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”

“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.”

“There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.”

“Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.”

“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.”

“To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.”

“There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.”

“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.”

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

“We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.”

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.”

“The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.”

“The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.”

“It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”

“All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.”

“To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.”

“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.”