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He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. Most begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind changes from aft, and as within the tropics it does not blow from all points of the compass, there are some harbors which they can never reach.

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Power
Blow
Harbors
Doe
Changes
Sailor
Tack
Best
Reach
Sailing
Veer
Never
Soon
Compass
Fewest
Begin
Conformity
Tropics
Wind
Motive
Extract
Greatest
Points
Steer
Within
Obstacles
Steers

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Why the jailer does not leave open his prison doors,--why the judge does not dismiss his case,--why the preacher does not dismisshis congregation! It is because they do not obey the hint God gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all.
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No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher.
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The universe is wider than our views of it.
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Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man.
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On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.
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I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one day in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to me has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it.
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Unless the human race perspire more than I do, there is no occasion to live by the sweat of their brow. If men cannot get on without money (the smallest amount will suffice), the truest method of earning it is by working as a laborer at one dollar per day. You are least dependent so I speak as an expert, having used several kinds of labor.
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Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I'm astonished to perceive how good a purpose the level of excitement is made to serve.
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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.
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That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabitable shore of Labrador gave the English no just title to New England, or to the United States generally, any more than to Patagonia.
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The country is an archipelago of lakes,--the lake-country of New England.
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Biography, too, is liable to the same objection it should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our bowels that we may be somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be?
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In their daily life, all are braver than they know.
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In the long run, you hit only what you aim at.
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Where there is a brave man, in the thickest of the fight, there is the post of honor.
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We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.
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If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.
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Who is old enough to have learned from experience?
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One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.
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We can never have enough of Nature.
Henry David Thoreau