Henry David Thoreau

“It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than...”

“It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.”

“The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and p...”

“What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always...”

“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.”

“I mean that they (students) should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths...”

“Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valu...”

“Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”

“There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very...”

“We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.”

“There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.”

“What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.”

“There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are de...”

“A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.”

“There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor.”

“To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.”

“It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.”

“I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.”

“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

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