Henry David Thoreau

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

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

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.

Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

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.

'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

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

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

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.