Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

find your eternity in each moment

Do not despair of your life. You have force enough to overcome your obstacles.

Live in each season as it passes: breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit.

To have made even one person's life a little better, that is to succeed.

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

One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

The scenery, when it is truly seen, reacts on the life of the seer. How to live. How to get the most of life.... How to extract its honey from the flower of the world.

It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.

Every day or two, I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs.

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.

Faith never makes a confession.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.

If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure, that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

As for the dispute about solitude and society, any comparison is impertinent. It is an idling down on the plane at the base of a mountain, instead of climbing steadily to its top.

In an unjust society the only place for a just man is prison.

The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind.

I have seen more men than usual, lately; and, well as I was acquainted with one, I am surprised to find what vulgar fellows they are.

I learned to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of nature, rather than a member of society.

The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers.