I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.
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.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
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.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
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.
Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. . . . In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.
The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode.
It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.
A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener.
To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
or simply:
