• From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • It is neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors; when that which is eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual life, but food for the worms that possess us.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • A puritan may go to his brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle. Not that food which entereth into the mouth defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • He told me, with the utmost simplicity and truth, quite superior, or rather inferior, to anything that is called humility, that he was “deficient in intellect.” These were his words. The Lord had made him so, yet he supposed the Lord cared as much for him as for another. “I have always been so,” said he, “from my childhood; I never had much mind; I was not like other children; I am weak in the head. It was the Lord’s will, I suppose.”

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • It would have suggested many things to a philosopher to have dealings with him. To a stranger he appeared to know nothing of things in general; yet I sometimes saw in him a man whom I had not seen before, and I did not know whether he was as wise as Shakespeare or as simply ignorant as a child, whether to suspect him of a fine poetic consciousness or of stupidity.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • He was so simply and naturally humble—if he can be called humble who never aspires—that humility was no distinct quality in him, nor could he conceive of it.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau