Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

I love reform better than its modes.

If to chaffer and higgle are bad in trade, they are much worse in Love. It demands directness as of an arrow.

I love my friends very much, but I find that it is of no use to go to see them. I hate them commonly when I am near them. They belie themselves and deny me continually.

Love is no individual's experience; and though we are imperfect mediums, it does not partake of our imperfection; though we are finite, it is infinite and eternal.

As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth.

In the love of narrow souls I make many short voyages but in vain-I find no sea room-but in great souls I sail before the wind without a watch, and never reach the shore.

There is no treatment for adore, but to love far more.

The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of hate.

One may be drunk with love without being any nearer to finding his mate.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.

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

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

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

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

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

All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

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

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

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