Colin > Colin's Quotes

“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“A truly good book…teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down and commence living on its hint. When I read an indifferent book, it seems the best thing I can do, but the inspiring volume hardly leaves me leisure to finish its latter pages. It is slipping out of my fingers while I read…What I began by reading I must finish by acting.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“for my greatest skill has been to want but little.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next. ”
― Henry David Thoreau

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods

“Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.”
― Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

“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. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.”
― Henry David Thoreau , A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

“Men are born to succeed, not to fail.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.”
― Confucius

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
― Oliver Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World, Or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to His Friends in the Country, by Dr. Goldsmith

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
― Confucius

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
― Confucius

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
― Confucius, Confucius: The Analects

“To be wronged is nothing, unless you continue to remember it.”
― Confucius

“Silence is a true friend who never betrays.”
― Confucius

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
― Mark Twain

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
― Mark Twain

“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”
― Mark Twain

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
― Mark Twain

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
― Mark Twain

“You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.”
― Olin Miller