Simplicity is the peak of civilization.
As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth.
The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.
The rule is to carry as little as possible.
Simplicity is the law of nature for men as well as for flowers.
My themes will not be far-fetched. I will tell of homely every-day phenomena and adventures.
A man sits as many risks as he runs.
Oh to reach the point of death and realize one has not lived at all.
Sometimes you have to leave the world in order to learn how to live in it. Thoreau shunned society, went to the woods, and came back with a new understanding of life.
The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
In solitude especialy do we begin to appreciate the advantage of living with someone who can think.
In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin.
Law never made man a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made agents of injustice.
Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand.
When I consider how, after sunset, the stars come out gradually in troops from behind the hills and woods, I confess that I could not have contrived a more curious and inspiring sight.
Life is grand, and so are its environments of Past and Future. Would the face of nature be so serene and beautiful if man’s destiny were not equally so?
The art of life, of a poet’s life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.
A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book.
I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.
Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.