Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a living... I thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I could do.

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced.

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months.

When it is time to die, let us not discover that we never lived.