Henry David Thoreau

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

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

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

I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid.

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.

I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks.

If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?

Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

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