Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear.

Nature is mythical and mystical always, and works with the license and extravagance of genius.

How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed-time of character?

that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety.

In my house we were so near that we could not begin to hear -- we could not speak low enough to be heard; as when you throw two stones into calm water so near that they break each other's undulations.

I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.

Real power is measured by how much you can let things be.

When the subject has refused allegiance and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.

Live free, child of the mist—and with respect to knowledge we are all children of the mist.