"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."
— Henry David Thoreau

"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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms. "
— Henry David Thoreau (Walden: Or, Life in the Woods)

"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 he hears, however measured or far away. "
— Henry David Thoreau

"Be not simply good. Be good for something."
— Henry David Thoreau

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. "
— Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience And Other Essays the Collected Essays of Henry David Thoreau)