Embedded Files
“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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
“Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.”
“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.”
“I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe — "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.”
“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
“Be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be.”
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.”
“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”
“I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”
“I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”
“Not till we are completely lost or turned around... do we begin to find ourselves.”
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.”
“I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”
“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
“Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.”
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.”
“One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter.”
“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”
“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”
“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
“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.”
“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.”
“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.”
“All good things are wild and free.”
“There is no remedy for love, but to love more.”
“I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
“A bore is someone who takes away my solitude and doesn't give me companionship in return.”
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