“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.”

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

A written word is the choicest of relics.

Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land.

Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

This world is but canvas to our imaginations.

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!

Simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real.

It takes two to speak the truth – one to speak and another to hear.

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.

Wildness is the preservation of the World.

The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.

I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.

It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings. It refreshes one like flowers and woods and clear brooks.

I think we ripple on into others, just like a stone puts its ripples into a brook. That, for me, too, is a source of comfort. It kind of, in a sense, negates the sense of total oblivion.

The brilliance of Max Brooks is that he always quotes authorities at the back of his books that never existed. Like a Russian professor he made up that validates a story or character.

There’s an army story in me, and I think there’s a WWII Brooks film somewhere.

I never stepped foot into a Brooks Brothers before Mad Men.