If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated? – Henry David Thoreau
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. – Henry David Thoreau
If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself. – Henry David Thoreau
We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being. – Henry David Thoreau
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. – Henry David Thoreau
The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument. – Henry David Thoreau
Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve. – Henry David Thoreau
Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are. – Henry David Thoreau
I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. – Henry David Thoreau
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see. – Henry David Thoreau
As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. – Henry David Thoreau
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. – Henry David Thoreau
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things. – Henry David Thoreau
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready. – Henry David Thoreau