We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
romantic · transcendentalism
Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau · 1817–1862
Surveyor of Walden Pond and of the cost of things in hours of life. Tools, solitude, and the different drummer.
Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
I love to be alone. I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
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.
Men have become the tools of their tools.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.