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. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.
Henry David ThoreauImpulse is, after all, the best linguist; its logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most convincing.
Henry David ThoreauWhen I hear a grown man or woman say, "Once I had faith in men, now I have not," I am inclined to ask, "Who are you whom the world has disappointed? Have not you rather disappointed the world?"
Henry David ThoreauSome are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.
Henry David ThoreauCultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.
Henry David Thoreau