Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

I cannot but feel compassion when I hear some trig, compact-looking man, seemingly free, all girded and ready, speak of his 'furniture,' as whether it is insured or not. 'But what shall I do with my furniture?'...It would surpass the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run.

There is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected.

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

Being is the great explainer.

Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw. There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man, -all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners!

Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows that surround it. We need the tonic of wildness...

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.

I will not through humility become the devil's attorney

I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour.

Nature now, like an athlete, begins to strip herself in earnest for her contest with her great antagonist Winter. In the bare trees and twigs what a display of muscle!

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.