Less-creative people can't shift gears. Very creative people move between these two states intuitively.
In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.
Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don't destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!
It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this. I wish to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events, everyday phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbors, may inspire me, and I may dream of no heaven but that which lies about me.
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
For the most part we stupidly confound one man with another. The dull distinguish only races or nations, or at most classes, but the wise man, individuals.
Drug dealers live vicariously through me
Some level of truthfulness has always been seen as essential to human society, no matter how deficient the observance of other moral principles.
If you hear that someone is speaking ill of you, instead of trying to defend yourself you should say: 'He obviously does not know me very well, since there are so many other faults he could have mentioned. '