"I have spent many an hour, when I was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my b...
To be awake is to be alive.
More Henry David Thoreau quotes
"The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also with confidence. Why has ...
"O Prince, our eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe. The night veils without d...
"Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.
"Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.
"Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us ...
"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; to stand on the meetin...
"I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acqu...
"In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do no...
"Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.
"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
"I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annuall...
"Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other.We meet at meals three tim...
"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 teac...
"This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wan...