“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“I had three chairs in my house one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?”
– Henry David Thoreau
“If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“Make the most of your regrets never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“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.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“What is human warfare but just this an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?”
– Henry David Thoreau
“There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“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.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“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.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”
– Henry David Thoreau