Henry David Thoreau

I know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection; and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is no part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

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.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice.

Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.

His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

Nothing does more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.

I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.

Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos; trees, clouds, everything.

To see helpless infancy stretching out her hands, and pouring out her cries in testimony of dependence, without any powers to alarm jealousy, or any guilt to alienate affection, must surely awaken tenderness in every human mind; and tenderness once excited will be hourly increased by the natural contagion of felicity, by the repercussion of communicated pleasure, by the consciousness of dignity of benefaction.

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.

In this magical hour, as the black ink sky fades to forget-me-not grey and the Cyprus trees emerge from the shadows, I tune in to my heart. In clarity, I choose to step into freedom to bring lightness of being and to be love.

Between us, we cover all knowledge; he knows all that can be known and I know the rest.

Mr. Emerson visited Thoreau at the jail, and the meeting between the two philosophers must have been interesting and somewhat dramatic. The account of the meeting was told me by Miss Maria Thoreau Henry Thoreaus auntHenry, why are you here? Waldo, why are you not here?

There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.

It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the dear deceit of beauty.

I strive to be brief, and I become obscure.