I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don’t get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next.
—Thoreau to Daniel Ricketson, 9 September 1857I have been breaking silence these twenty three years and have hardly made a rent in it.
—Journal, 9 February 1841I have been making pencils all day, and then at evening walked to see an old schoolmate who is going to help make Welland Canal navigable for ships round Niagara. He cannot see any such motives and modes of living as I; professes not to look beyond securing certain “creature comforts”. And so we go silently different ways . . .
—Journal, 17 March 1842I have been sick so long that I have almost forgotten what it is to be well, yet I feel that it all respects only my envelope.
—Thoreau to Daniel Ricketson, 15 August 1861I have been surprised to discover the amount and the various kinds of life which a single shallow swamp will sustain.
—Journal, 12 May 1850I have faith that the man who redeemed some acres of land the past summer redeemed also some parts of his character.
—Journal, 1 March 1852I have heard of some who were 15 years a dying—a shiftless business for which neither gods nor mortals have any sympathy to spare.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversI have just got a letter from Ricketson, urging me to come to New Bedford, which possibly I may do. He says I can wear my old clothes there.
—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 26 September 1855I have lately got back to that glorious society called Solitude.
—Thoreau to H. G. O. Blake, 1 January 1859I 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.
—WaldenI have never known advise to be of use but in trivial and transient matters.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversI have never met with a friend who furnished me sea-room. I have only tacked a few times and come to anchor—not sailed—made no voyage, carried no venture.
—Journal, 24 August 1852I never read a novel, they have so little real life and thought in them.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversI have some good friends from whom I am wont to part with disappointment for they neither care what I think nor mind what I say.
—Journal, 27 January 1854I heard a night-warbler, wood thrush, kingfisher, tweezer-bird or parti-colored warbler, and a nighthawk.
—The Maine WoodsI heartily accept the motto,—“That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.
—"Civil Disobedience"