The bluebird carries the sky on his back.Henry David Thoreau: Journal
Beauty
The perception of beauty is a moral test.Henry David Thoreau: Journal
Body and Face
Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Charity
Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it.Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Clothing
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Companionship
What men call social virtue, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.Henry David Thoreau: Journal
Despair
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Evidence
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.Henry David Thoreau: Journal
Fashion
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Government
I heartily accept the motto,—“That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,—“That government is best which governs not at all.”Henry David Thoreau: Civil Disobedience
Individuality
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Language
When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, . . . I think— Any fool can make a rule And every fool will mind it.Henry David Thoreau: Journal
Majorities
Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.Henry David Thoreau: Civil Disobedience
Reform and Reformers
If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even,—for that is the seat of sympathy,—he forthwith sets about reforming the world.Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Regret
Make the most of your regrets. . . . To regret deeply is to live afresh.Henry David Thoreau: Journal
Resignation
What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Simplicity
Our life is frittered away by detail. . . . Simplify, simplify.Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Solitude and Loneliness
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.Henry David Thoreau: Walden
The Environment
In Wildness is the preservation of the world.Henry David Thoreau
The Universe
I do not value any view of the universe into which man and the institutions of man enter very largely and absorb much of the attention. Man is but the place where I stand, and the prospect hence is infinite.Henry David Thoreau: Journal
Time
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Truth
It takes two to speak the truth—one to speak, and another to hear.Henry David Thoreau: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Unhappiness
If misery loves company, misery has company enough.Henry David Thoreau: Journal
Value
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.Henry David Thoreau: Walden
Wealth
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.Henry David Thoreau: Journal
Wisdom and Sense
A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.Henry David Thoreau: Journal
