Walden

Famous quotes

• As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

  In context

  • Time

• The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

  p. 10In context

  • Life & Death

• The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?

  Economy (1 of 3)In context

  • Morality
  • Virtue

• 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.

  p. 18In context

  • Money

• None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

  In context

  • Money
  • Wisdom

• There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

  Economy (1 of 3)In context

  • Philosophy
  • Wisdom

• Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

  In context

• Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

  In context

  • Youth

• I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

  Economy (2 of 3)In context

  • Happiness
  • Money

• But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.

  Economy (2 of 3)In context

  • Technology

• Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.

  pp. 60-61In context

  • Technology

• We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

  Economy (2 of 3)In context

  • Talking
  • Technology

• If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

  p. 85In context

  • Charity

• There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

  p. 87In context

  • Good & Evil

• To be awake is to be alive.

  In context

  • Sleep

• To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

  Where I Lived, and What I Lived ForIn context

  • Inspiration
  • Life & Death

• 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.

  Where I Lived, and What I Lived ForIn context

  • Life & Death
  • Nature

• I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear.

  p. 104In context

  • Life & Death

• I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life

  Where I Lived, and What I Lived ForIn context

  • Life & Death

• Our life is frittered away by detail.

  Where I Lived, and What I Lived ForIn context

  • Life & Death

• Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.

  Where I Lived, and What I Lived ForIn context

  • Advice
  • Life & Death

• How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

  ReadingIn context

  • Reading

• I love a broad margin to my life.

  SoundsIn context

  • Life & Death
  • Time

• I love to be alone. I never found the 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.

  SolitudeIn context

  • Friendship
  • Thinking

• I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

  Higher LawsIn context

  • Animals
  • Food

• Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.

  Higher LawsIn context

  • God

• I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

  p. 364In context

  • Motivation & Goals

• 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.

  ConclusionIn context

  • Character

• Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

  p. 375In context

  • Hope

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