Henry David Thoreau

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

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

The universe is wider than our views of it.

I would rather be a wood-chopper than a professor of ethics.

He who would make his fellow-creatures happy must cease to be happy himself.

The government is best which governs not at all.

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

I have traveled a good deal in Concord.

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

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

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.