Walden Henry David Thoreau

“The country knows not yet, or in the last part, how great a son it has lost…. But he, at least, is content. His soul was made for the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson (at Thoreau’s funeral)

Pg.404 “For a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”

Pg. 405 “I have no doubt that time discriminates between the good and bad” “But I would say to my fellows, once for all, as long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.”

Pg.406 "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 wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life”

Pg.407 “Ruined by luxury” “Whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain.” “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. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars.” “I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.” “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.”

Pg.407-408 “The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!”

Pg.408 “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.”

Pg. 409 “Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest.”

Pg. 411 “There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star”