Walden

"What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?"

"Dreams are the touchstones of our characters."

"One world at a time."

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."

"The poet, he hath put his lips to the infinite and drunk out rapture."

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book."

"Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with the bulk of mankind."

"In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time and notch it on my stick too."

"The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake."

"We live meanly, like ants; but the moment a man begins to cherish higher thoughts, he becomes instantly nobler and greater."

"It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?"

"When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men are not yet born."

"I should not obey instinct. Besides, every man is tasked with all of the world, as I am."

"For every walk abroad is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels."

"Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations."

"Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself."

"The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us."

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."

"I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains."

"Nature never wears the same expression twice, for her moods change oftener than the clothes of mortals."

"Most of the luxuries and many of the so called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind."

"The only wealth is life. Life is the only wealth."

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."

"I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

"Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail."

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."