Henry David Thoreau

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

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.

I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

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.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.