Henry David Thoreau

Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

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

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and by means of windows even admit the light and with a lamp lengthen out the day.

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

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

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

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.

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.

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

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

The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob, before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.

In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.

The youth gets together this material to build a bridge to the moon or perchance a palace or temple on earth and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.