HENRY DAVID THOREAU

"A truly good book teaches me better than to read it."

"Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new."

"Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself."

"The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams."

"This world is but canvas to our imaginations."

"We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice."

"Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence."

"Any fool can make a rule And any fool will mind it."

"I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well."

"I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself."

"If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment."

"The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings."

"Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written."

"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?"

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."

"You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment."

"An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day."

"I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society."

"Write while the heat is in you."

"Dreams are the touchstones of our characters."

"Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth."

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

"If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man."

"I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time."

"To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake."

"The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”"

"Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to be."

"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake."

"Wildness is the preservation of the World."

"There is no remedy for love but to love more."

"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all."

"Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe."

"Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion."

"The universe is wider than our views of it."

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

"I have a room all to myself; it is nature."

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."

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

"Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity."

"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."

"Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth."

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

"I make myself rich by making my wants few."

"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."

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