Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a west as distant and as fair as that into which the Sun goes down. He appears to migrate westward daily and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those mountain ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which were last gilded by his rays.

Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, to life itself, than this incessant business.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours …but it is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.

O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery.

Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself.

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.

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.