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.”

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand.”

“Our life is frittered away by detail.”

“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.”

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.”

“It is not what you look at that matters, it is what you see.”

“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”

“Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live.”

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

“We need the tonic of wildness... At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable.”

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”

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

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

“It is never too late to give up your prejudices.”

“What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?”

“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.”

“I had rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”

“The more you own, the more it owns you.”