Thoreau Walden Quotes

#1. People are not perfect - that is, they do not yet express externally their internal perfection.

Marianne Williamson

#2. It would seem that for my master a book is not a thing to be read, but a device to bring on slumber: a typographical sleeping-pill, a paginated security blanket.

Soseki Natsume

#3. If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable - what then? But

George Orwell

#4. There's nobody who loves being around actors working more than David Mamet, especially actors bringing his tremendous dialogue to life. I've never seen a movie director who was happier to be directing a movie than Dave.

Clark Gregg

#5. Mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived

Henry David Thoreau

#6. The fault-finder will find fault even in paradise.

Henry David Thoreau

#7. Knowledge is nothing without action. Nothing changes until you do something. What you do will directly determine what you learn.

James A. Belasco

#8. My purpose in going to Walden Pond
was not to live cheaply
nor to live dearly there
but to transact some private business,
with the fewest obstacles ...
It's a good place for business ...
it offers advantages
which it may not be good policy to divulge.

Henry David Thoreau

#9. Society is commonly too cheap.

Henry David Thoreau

#10. I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake,I pray?

Henry David Thoreau

#11. I once found a kernel of corn in the middle of a deep wood by Walden, tucked in behind a lichen on a pine, about as high as my head, either by a crow or a squirrel. It was a mile at least from any corn-field.

Henry David Thoreau

#12. I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven
Than I live to Walden even.
I am its stony shore,
And the breeze that passes o'er;
In the hollow of my hand
Are its water and its sand,
And its deepest resort
Lies high in my thought.

Henry David Thoreau

#13. There is a very modest side to me too. How far away from me is the image? It's about 20 steps away.

Madonna Ciccone

#14. Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th,1847.

Henry David Thoreau

#15. To be awake is to be alive.

Henry David Thoreau

#16. Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought, go about doing good.

Henry David Thoreau

#17. You may not have faith in my friend fate,
But my friend fate has faith in you.

Matthew Lillard

#18. My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.

Henry David Thoreau

#19. For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman; ... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.

Henry David Thoreau

#20. Every act and choice you make is creating the real you and shaping your real life.

Elizabeth George

#21. The outside is the only place we can truly be inside the world.

Daniel J. Rice

#22. Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

Henry David Thoreau

#23. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery.

Henry David Thoreau

#24. I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse.

Henry David Thoreau

#25. Let us rise early and fast, or breakfast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry-determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream?

Henry David Thoreau

#26. A good listener is a good talker with a sore throat.

Katherine Whitehorn

#27. Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

Henry David Thoreau

#28. The suburb was the major element of Australian society.

Robin Boyd

#29. Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe.

Henry David Thoreau

#30. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

Henry David Thoreau

#31. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.

Henry David Thoreau

#32. The other thing that happened in 1883 was my reading of Thoreau's Walden.

Edward Carpenter

#33. Zarathustra received his revelations from the archangels at age thirty, when he began his prophetic mission; Siddhartha's great renunciation of his princely life took place in his thirtieth year. Thoreau at age thirty finished his self-imposed isolation at Walden Pond.

Kevin Dann