As with our colleges, so with a hundred ‘modern improvements;’ there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. 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...

— Henry David Thoreau

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness.

— Henry David Thoreau

A wise man will know what game to play to-day, and play it. We must not be governed by rigid rules, as by the almanac, but let the season rule us. The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature's. Nothing must be postponed. Take time by the forelock. Now or never! You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this. Where the good husbandman is, there is the good soil. Take any other course, and life will be a succession of regrets. Let us see vessels sailing prosperously before the wind, and not simply stranded barks. There is no world for the penitent and regretful.

— Henry David Thoreau

A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. Furthermore, it may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.

— Henry David Thoreau

Be not simply good - be good for something.

— Henry David Thoreau

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it is your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them.

— Henry David Thoreau

Between whom there is hearty truth there is love.

— Henry David Thoreau

Beware all enterprises that require new clothes.

— Henry David Thoreau

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

— Henry David Thoreau

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

— Henry David Thoreau