Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, and abolitionist.

1034. If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

1035. Any fool can make a rule And any fool will mind it.

1036. The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.

1037. A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

1038. When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

1039. What’s the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

1040. It’s not worth our while to let our imperfections disturb us always.

1041. It is never too late to give up your prejudices.

1042. The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.

616. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

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

618. Be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be.

619. Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

620. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

621. The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

622. Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

623. There is no remedy for love, but to love more.

580. Men have become the tools of their tools.

581. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

582. All good things are wild and free.

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

584. Not till we are completely lost or turned around... do we begin to find ourselves.

585. Things do not change; we change.

586. It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

587. Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

442. It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.

443. What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

444. I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

445. The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

446. Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

447. If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

122. I make myself rich by making my wants few.

123. In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

124. Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

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

126. Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.

127. It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?" "Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

128. Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

129. While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.