• I asked him once if he was not sometimes tired at night, after working all day; and he answered, with a sincere and serious look, “Gorrappit, I never was tired in my life.”

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can “see the folks,” and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himself for his day’s solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and “the blues”; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account; for, beside that before he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself, I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbor’s instead.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. Could you, in such a case, tell surely of any company of civilized men which belonged to the most respected class?

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us!

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad,

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau