24 quotes
None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.
Walden (1854)
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.
Walden (1854)
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
Walden (1854)
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.
Walden (1854)
Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
Walden (1854)
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
Walden (1854)
How can he remember well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often to use his knowledge?
Walden (1854)
If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
Walden (1854)
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Walden (1854)
The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior.
Walden (1854)
Men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.
Walden (1854)
Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
Walden (1854)
Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate oddfellow society.
Walden (1854)
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.
Walden (1854)
The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass – I the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.
Walden (1854)
We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it.
Walden (1854)
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.
Walden (1854)
I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
Walden (1854)
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? 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.
Walden (1854)
You who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass -- I the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.
Walden (1854)