Symbolic Quotes of Henry David Thoreau

"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake." 

— Henry David Thoreau

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts." 

— Henry David Thoreau

"Things do not change; we change." 

— Henry David Thoreau

"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it." 

"I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run. " 

— Henry David Thoreau

"Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves." 

— Henry David Thoreau

"I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in it's gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals." 

— Henry David Thoreau

"Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth." 

— Henry David Thoreau (Walden, or Life in the Woods)

"The universe is wider than our views of it." 

— Henry David Thoreau

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"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." 

— Henry David Thoreau (Walden)

"In wildness is...