He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. - (Thoreau, Henry David - Ability)

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. - (Thoreau, Henry David - Ability)

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do? - (Thoreau, Henry David - Achievement)

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy. - (Thoreau, Henry David - Action)

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now. - (Thoreau, Henry David - Action)

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language. - (Thoreau, Henry David - Adulthood)

I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. - (Thoreau, Henry David - Advice)

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something. - (Thoreau, Henry David - Advice)

As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. - (Thoreau, Henry David - Age and Aging)

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. - (Thoreau, Henry David - Age and Aging)

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm - (Thoreau, Henry David - Age and Aging)

How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets. - (Thoreau, Henry David - Age and Aging)

Water is the only drink for a wise man. - (Thoreau, Henry David - Alcohol and Alcoholism)

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground. - (Thoreau, Henry David - Animals)

The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams. - (Thoreau, Henry David - Animals)