• I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • The town’s poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode;

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • Say what you have to say, not what you ought.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • “Live at home like a traveler.”

    —Henry David Thoreau

  • Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau