Henry David Thoreau

And if the civ­i­lized man’s pur­suits are no wor­thier than the sav­age’s, if he is em­ployed the greater part of his life in ob­tain­ing gross nec­es­saries and com­forts merely, why should he have a bet­ter dwelling than the for­mer?

All change is a mir­a­cle to con­tem­plate; but it is a mir­a­cle which is tak­ing place ev­ery in­stant.

Con­fu­cius said, “To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowl­edge.”

The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

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

One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.

This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre.

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a 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 there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.