Henry David Thoreau

This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore.

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

Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you'll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books. And then you'll be in as much trouble as I am!

Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted or enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.

Life consists with Wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest trees.

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

Everyone must believe in something. I believe I'll go canoeing.

Every blade in the field - Every leaf in the forest - lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.

But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried.

Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny and trivial.

I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.

So long as a man is faithful to himself, everything is in his favor, government, society, the very sun, moon, and stars.

You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.

Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.

Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to be.