H.D. Thoreau

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Things do not change; we change.

On tops of mountains, as everywhere to hopeful souls, it is always morning.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

Though I am old enough to have discovered that
the dreams of youth are not to be realized in this state of existence
yet I think it would be the next greatest happiness always to be allowed
to look under the eyelids of time and contemplate the perfect steadily
with the clear understanding that I do not attain to it.

To be awake is to be alive.

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.

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.

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

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise
as the day I was born.

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.