The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
The sentence comes in the long opening chapter, “Economy”, where Thoreau counts what a life costs in work. He adds that what is called resignation is “confirmed desperation”.
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
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.
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.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, / The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.