Thoreau, Henry David

"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 which he hears, however measured or far away."

"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready."

"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."

"In the long run, men only hit what they aim at."

"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."

"We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."

"Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs."

"A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend."

"To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts; but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates."

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

"Time is but the stream I go a fishing in."

"I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion."

"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk." - Journal

"The perception of beauty is a moral test." - Journal

"What men call social virtue, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm." - Journal

"Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it." - Walden (1854)

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation." - Walden (1854)

"I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes." - Walden (1854)

"Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new." - Walden (1854)

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." - Walden (1854), I,Economy

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes." - Walden (1854), I,Economy

"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." - Walden (1854), II, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

"The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them." - Walden (1854), III, Reading

"I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will." - Walden (1854), V, Solitude

"In wildness is the preservation of the world." - Walking (1862)