Henry David Thoreau

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that 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...”

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

“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...”

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

“Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.”

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

“When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.”

“The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.”

“Whate'er we leave to God, God does and blesses us.”

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb...”

“What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. It does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter.”

“I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.”

“Things do not change; we change.”

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.”

“Where there is a brave man, in the thickest of the fight, there is the post of honor.”

“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.”

“Experience is in the fingers and the head. The heart is inexperienced.”

“The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.”

“Friends will not only live in harmony, but in melody.”