Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage.

— Henry David Thoreau

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.

— Henry David Thoreau

But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run "amok" against society; but I preferred that society should run "amok" against me, it being the desperate party.

— Henry David Thoreau

Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.

— Henry David Thoreau

City life - millions of people being lonesome together.

— Henry David Thoreau

Color which is the poet's wealth is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.

— Henry David Thoreau

Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.

— Henry David Thoreau

Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimented. It is in fact a subtle detraction.

— Henry David Thoreau

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

— Henry David Thoreau

Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.

— Henry David Thoreau