Henry David Thoreau

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

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.

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 puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.

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

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

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.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

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

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.

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

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

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

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.

The law will never make a man free it is men who have got to make the law free.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.