How admirably the artist is made to accomplish his self-culture by devotion to his art! The wood-sawyer, through his effort to do his work well, becomes not merely a better wood-sawyer, but measurably a better man.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 19 December 1853
How is it that we are impelled to treat our old friends so ill when we obtain new ones?—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
How much virtue there is in simply seeing!—Journal, 10 April 1840
How often are we wise as serpents without being harmless as doves!—Journal, 9 February 1851
I exclaim to myself, Surfaces! surfaces! If the outside of a man is so variegated and extensive, what must the inside be?—Journal, 10 March 1859
I expect the Christian not to be superstitious but to be distinguished by the clearness of his knowledge, the strength of his faith, the breadth of his humanity.—Journal, 25 September 1851
I had two friends. The one offered me friendship on such terms that I could not accept it, without a sense of degradation.—Journal, 4 March 1856
I have been breaking silence these twenty three years and have hardly made a rent in it.—Journal, 9 February 1841
I have faith that the man who redeemed some acres of land the past summer redeemed also some parts of his character.—Journal, 1 March 1852
I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant.—Walden
All quotation categories  

Donation

$