Henry David Thoreau

'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.

To know that we know what we know and that we do not know what we do not know that is true knowledge.

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbours.

A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

If I knew ... that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good I should run for my life.

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.

It's only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to God.

In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore though they should fall immediately they had better aim at something high.

Not only must we be good but we must also be good for something.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

There is not so good an understanding between any two but the exposure by the one of a serious fault in the other will produce a misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness.

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

How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.

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