Henry David Thoreau

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

The world is but a canvas for our imagination

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.

I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

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.

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

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

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.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.

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

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.