100+ Powerful Walden Quotes to Inspire Simplicity & Self-Reflection

"I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately."

"We are determined to be starved before we are hungry."

"Nothing can make amends for the loss of time."

"Our life is frittered away by detail."

"Simplify, simplify."

"As long as possible, live free and uncommitted."

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams… he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."

"Truly, it is a miracle that has begun in you when you desire to be alone."

"In wildness is the preservation of the world."

"Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases, he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest."

"Simplify, simplify."

"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."

"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."

"When I reflect to consider how much I have been enriched by these few possessions, I feel like a prince."

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."

"Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous."

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

"Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?"

"It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by sweating."

"Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul."

"The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels."

"In wildness is the preservation of the world."

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life."

"Nature is full of genius, fidelity, and sweetness; it returns to its law as well as we can perceive."

"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads."

"We can never have enough of nature."

"The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted."

"We need the tonic of wildness."

"The bluebird carries the sky on his back."

"All good things are wild and free."

"The earth is not a laboratory, but a temple."

"I saw spiders whose webs glistened like silver threads after a shower."

"The beauty of the daybreak is always new, and yet we seem to remember it."

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in."

"I do not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather go before the mast and on the deck of the world."

"The past and future are nothing compared to the present."

"It is time to improve the opportunity now before us."

"We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us."

"We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough."

"The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise."

"None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty."

"The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us."

"We are determined to be starved before we are hungry."

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises?"

"It is not worth the while to live by a devious road that you may get the means to live in a house you do not like."

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."

"To be awake is to be alive."

"I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion."

"Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star."

"If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man."

"The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men."

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn."

"What everybody echoes or agrees upon is often false."

"It is easier to make half a dozen jobs in an hour than to make one whole act in a lifetime."

"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things."

"We are armed with technology but lack wisdom."

"The finest poetry was the least read."

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."

"Truth is more beautiful than any fiction."

"There is no odor so bad as that of corruption when it is sovereign."

"If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with conscious design to do me good, I should run for my life."

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty."

"The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely."

"We are not where we are, but in a false position."

"Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it."

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."

"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys."

"The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines."

"It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right."

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

"You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment."

"We are not doing anything worth recording while we live."

"However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names."

"The sun is but a morning star."

"We are determined to be starved before we are hungry."

"Only that day dawns to which we are awake."

"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals."

"Dreams are the touchstones of our characters."

"The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace in the air."

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it."

"The improvement of the understanding is a kind of training for immortality."

"The majority of men are not prepared to hear truth."

"The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people think they have a right to resist."

"Men make their own institutions and then are made by them."

"The evils of this world are not the result of too little thought, but of too much conformity."

"We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us."

"The reformer is always a rebel."

"The less government we have, the better—provided we are capable of managing ourselves."

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed?"

"The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet."

"We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."

"The newspapers are the bustling, crackling, rattling fires of society."

"The condition of the poor is on principle, that of the slaves."

"Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day."

"Education is the art of transmitting values."

"The highest form of self-respect is love of God."

"To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."

"Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations."

"I have traveled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere I go I find that a man's property amounts to just what he is not obliged to surrender."

"The learning which consists of facts is slow, dull, and barren."

"Knowledge is power, but enthusiasm is the key."

"The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future."

"We are in danger of forgetting the art of reading."

"Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature."

"Reading is a noble exercise, but it requires preparation and discipline."

"Be sure that you give the poor man a fish you have caught dishonestly."

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life."

"Only that day dawns to which we are awake."

"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake."

"An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day."

"The perception of beauty is a moral test."

"The finest music is not in the notes."

"We are constantly invited to be what we are."

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

"The question is not what you look at, but what you see."

"The most alive is he who is most receptive."

"Let us rise early and fast, as if we were going to a battle."