"Simplicity is the law of nature for men as well as for flowers."
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Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 20 of 139)
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"And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, - we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?"
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"I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is - I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?"
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"What is sour in the house a bracing walk in the woods makes sweet."
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"As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society."
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"What I began by reading, I must finish by acting."
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"The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor."
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"Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other."
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"A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile as a fungus or a lichen."
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"It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature."
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"It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes."
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"One is wise to cultivate the tree that bears fruit in our soul."
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"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."
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"The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to look at. Why should it stand so high at the shoulders? Why have so long a head? Why have no tail to speak of?"
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"Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?"
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"The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one. Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics; that is mixed mathematics."
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"The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely."
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"I have lately got back to that glorious society called Solitude."
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"Birds never sing in caves."
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"When you knock, ask to see God — none of the servants."
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