Henry David Thoreau

And if the civ­i­lized man’s pur­suits are no wor­thier than the sav­age’s, if he is em­ployed the greater part of his life in ob­tain­ing gross nec­es­saries and com­forts merely, why should he have a bet­ter dwelling than the for­mer?

I should not talk so much about my­self if there were any­body else whom I knew as well.

mis­for­tune it is to have in­her­ited farms, houses, barns, cat­tle, and farm­ing tools; for these are more eas­ily ac­quired than got rid of

How can he re­mem­ber well his ig­no­rance—which his growth re­quires—who has so of­ten to use his knowl­edge?

Public opin­ion is a weak tyrant com­pared with our own pri­vate opin­ion. What a man thinks of him­self, that it is which de­ter­mines, or rather in­di­cates, his fate

As if you could kill time with­out in­jur­ing eter­nity.

Age is no bet­ter, hardly so well, qual­i­fied for an in­struc­tor as youth, for it has not prof­ited so much as it has lost.

But man’s ca­pac­i­ties have never been mea­sured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any prece­dents, so lit­tle has been tried.

What­ever have been thy fail­ures hith­erto, “be not af­flicted, my child, for who shall as­sign to thee what thou hast left un­done?”

We might try our lives by a thou­sand sim­ple tests; as, for in­stance, that the same sun which ripens my beans il­lu­mines at once a sys­tem of earths like ours.