Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.

Henry David Thoreau

(Thoreau 1817-1862)

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.

James Thurber

  (Thurber 1894-1961)

 It is not enough to stay busy. So, too, are the ants. The question is what you are busy about.

Thoreau

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.

Thurber

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Thoreau

Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.

Thurber

What is the good of having a nice house without a decent planet to put it on? 

Thoreau

Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.

Thurber

The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.

Thoreau

All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

Thurber

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of the arts.

Thoreau

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.

Thurber

It is not what you do to the stone, but what the stone does to you.

Thoreau

There are two kinds of light--the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures.

Thurber

Beware of any enterprise that requires new clothes.

Thoreau

The naked truth about me is to the naked truth about Salvador Dali as an old ukelele in an attic is to a piano in a tree, and I mean a piano with breasts. 

Thurber