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.
Henry David Thoreau

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
Henry David Thoreau

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.
Henry David Thoreau

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.
Henry David Thoreau

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

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.
Henry David Thoreau

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
Henry David Thoreau

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.
Henry David Thoreau

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?
Henry David Thoreau

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

A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.
Henry David Thoreau

Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.
Henry David Thoreau

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.
Henry David Thoreau

There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.
Henry David Thoreau

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
Henry David Thoreau

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.
Henry David Thoreau

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

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.
Henry David Thoreau

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.
Henry David Thoreau

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.
Henry David Thoreau