I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
Be not simply good - be good for something.
This world is but a canvas to our imagination.
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.
Things do not change; we change.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
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.
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
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.
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
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.
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.
Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.
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.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.
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.
It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
