Quotes from Henry Thoreau

Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downwards through the mud and slush of opinion and tradition, and pride and prejudice, appearance and delusion, through the alluvium which covers the globe, through poetry and philosophy and religion, through church and state, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, till we come to a hard bottom that rocks in place which we can call reality and say, This is and no mistake.

The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature,- of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter,-such health, such cheer, they afford forever!...Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?

If you stand right fronting and face-to-face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a scimitar, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career.

Many people go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

I didn't know I had a quarrel with him.