I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes
Henry David Thoreau
Men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up
The only wealth is life.
The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.
Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.
The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.
A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.
Of what significance are the things you can forget.
The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.
We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.
The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.
As for Doing-good...I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.
Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?
I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.
Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them?
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at its root.
Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.
In the streets and in society I am almost invariablycheap and dissipated, my life is unspeakably mean.No amount of gold or respectability would in the leastredeem it,-- dining with the Governor or a member of Congress!!But alone in the distant woods or fields,in unpretending sprout-lands or pastures tracked by rabbits,even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this,when a villager would be thinking of his inn,I come to myself, I once more feel myself grandly related,and that cold and solitude are friends of mine.I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalentto what others get by churchgoing and prayer.I come home to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home.I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are,grand and beautiful. I have told many that I walk every dayabout half the daylight, but I think they do not believe it.I wish to get the Concord, the Massachusetts, the America,out of my head and be sane a part of every day.
I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.
Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.
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