Henry David Thoreau

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

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.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

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

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

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

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

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.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

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

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

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart it being much more sensitive.

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.