Henry David Thoreau - Walden (1854)

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What does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men?

Henry David Thoreau
As for Clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility.

Henry David Thoreau
I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again.

Henry David Thoreau
There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers

Henry David Thoreau
The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.

Henry David Thoreau
I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse.

Henry David Thoreau
The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.

Henry David Thoreau
Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant andfluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and independence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any.

Henry David Thoreau
The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must bestripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living laid for a foundation.

Henry David Thoreau
Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners?

Henry David Thoreau
At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house.

Henry David Thoreau
No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

Henry David Thoreau
I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not; but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.

Henry David Thoreau
It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.

Henry David Thoreau
The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what we do; and yet how much is not done by us!

Henry David Thoreau
The universe is wider than our views of it.

Henry David Thoreau
Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.

Henry David Thoreau
I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper.

Henry David Thoreau
I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known.

Henry David Thoreau
And if the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaininggross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former?

Henry David Thoreau
One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living.

Henry David Thoreau
I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account...

Henry David Thoreau
My excuse for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it; that is a penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay; though there are things enough I have chewed which I could lecture against.

Henry David Thoreau
Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.

Henry David Thoreau
The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks where the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets.

Henry David Thoreau
It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are yourself the slave-driver.

Henry David Thoreau
The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindu, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich inward.

Henry David Thoreau
But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.

Henry David Thoreau
I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that the corporations may be enriched.

Henry David Thoreau
Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.

Henry David Thoreau