Henry David Thoreau

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.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

The eye is the jewel of the body.

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may Old time is still a-flying. And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying.

Gnaw your own bone gnaw at it bury it unearth it gnaw it still.

When I would recreate myself I seek the darkest wood the thickest and most interminable and to the citizen most dismal swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place - a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength the marrow of Nature.

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree or a yellow birch or an old acquaintance among the pines.

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.

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good be good for something.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good be good for something.

You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you.

What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.