Henry David Thoreau

What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

Thus the great civilizer sends out its emissaries, sooner or later, to every sandy cape and light-house of the New World which the census-taker visits, and summons the savage there to surrender.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

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.

Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.

I believe that, in this country, the press exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence than the church did in its worst period. We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians.

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

City life - millions of people being lonesome together.

They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.

Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.