Mignonne > Mignonne's Quotes

“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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. 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, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Any fool can make a rule
And any fool will mind it.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Journal #14

“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?”
― Henry David Thoreau

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. 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 poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse 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.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“This world is but canvas to our imaginations.”
― Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

“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 weakness.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in it's gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Men have become the tools of their tools. Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul. 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.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“As to conforming outwardly and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run. ”
― Henry David Thoreau

“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?”
― Henry David Thoreau, Familiar letters

“We are born as innocents. We are polluted by advice.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.”
― Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

“I have a room all to myself; it is nature.”
― Thoreau Henry David

“I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?”
― Henry David Thoreau

“No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal,—that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality... The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“A man can suffocate on courtesy.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of feeble minds”
― Henry David Thoreau