Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
 
Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

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

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

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

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
 
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.

I stand in awe of my body.

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.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.

Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.

Men are born to succeed, not fail.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

My friend is one... who take me for what I am.

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

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.

The cost of a things is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.

Water is the only drink for a wise man.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.