Henry David Thoreau

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

Things do not change we change.

Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.

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

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

That government is best which governs least.

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

The man who goes alone can start today but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

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

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.