By Henry David Thoreau • American Transcendentalism & Deliberate Living
Thoreau's two-year experiment in simple, self-reliant living beside Walden Pond remains the definitive manifesto against materialism and hurried conformity.
“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.”
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
“Simplify, simplify.”
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
“I am a parcel of vain strivings tied By a chance bond together, Dangling this way and that, their links Were made so loose and wide, Methinks, For milder weather.”
“It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?”
“Who looks in the sun will see no light else; but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.”
“For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it.”
“Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.”
“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”
“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.”
“Any fool can make a rule And every fool will mind it.”
“Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.”
“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison... the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.”
“You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.”
“It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals.”
“Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.”
“The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.”
“Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”
“None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.”
“In wildness is the preservation of the world. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The city imports it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind.”
“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. I am surprised, as well as delighted, when this happens, it is such a rare use he would make of me, as if he were acquainted with the tool.”
“I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.”
“You come from attending the funeral of mankind to attend to a natural phenomenon. A little thought is sexton to all the world.”
“Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.”
“Who could believe in prophecies of Daniel or of Miller that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds?”
“But now I see I was not plucked for naught, And after in life's vase Of glass set while I might survive, But by a kind hand brought Alive To a strange place.”