Henry David Thoreau

Most of the luxuries and many of the so called comforts of life are not only indispensible but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

The fire is the main comfort of the camp whether in summer or winter and is about as ample at one season as at another. It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and dryness.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand.

I cannot read a single word of the Hindoos without being elevated.

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Water is the only drink for a wise man.

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.

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

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.

The heart is forever inexperienced.

Every man must walk to the beat of his own drummer.

The purity men love is like the mists which envelope the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond.

Faith never makes a confession.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

Man's moral nature is a riddle which only eternity can solve.

Wildness is the preservation of the world.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams!

The eye is the jewel of the body.

We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.

The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.

I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid.

Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.

The boy gathers materials for a temple and then when he is thirty concludes to build a woodshed.

Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore though they should fail immediately they had better aim at something high.

Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.

The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective.

Our circumstances answer to our expectations and the demand of our natures.

When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor.

All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.

Every child begins the world again.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

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

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference.

Be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely invested.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener.

Be yourself not your idea of what you think somebody elses idea of yourself should be.

The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

Christ is the prince of Reformers and Radicals.

Every blade in the field every leaf in the forest lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

You must not only aim right but draw the bow with all your might.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

You must not only aim right, but draw your bow with all your might.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.

It's not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?

Those whom we can love, we can hate; to others we are indifferent.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears however measured or far away.

Humility like the darkness reveals the heavenly lights.

A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double; the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the forepart plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her until you tread on it.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

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

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.

Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it.

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.

Where there is not discernment the behavior even of the purest soul may in effect amount to coarseness.

Routine is a ground to stand on, a wall to retreat to; we cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against it.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates his fate.

All expression of truth does at length take this deep ethical form.

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

It is never too late to give up your prejudices.