Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains.

Spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it, reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.

A taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors

I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

The true price of anything you do is the amount of time you exchange for it.

A gun will give you the body, not the bird

Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor.

A man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of life getting his living.

No man ever followed his genius til it misled him.

Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin!

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.

What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?

A man can suffocate on courtesy.

The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.

Morning brings back the heroic ages. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.

I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.