Henry David Thoreau Walden Pond Quotes & Sayings

My purpose in going to Walden Pond
was not to live cheaply
nor to live dearly there
but to transact some private business,
with the fewest obstacles ...
It's a good place for business ...
it offers advantages
which it may not be good policy to divulge. — Henry David Thoreau

Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe. — Henry David Thoreau

No individual, by the very state of existence, can avoid life as a form of servitude; it only remains for us to decide, deny, or remain oblivious to, whom or what we serve. — Carolyn Weber

Sometimes I get insecure about being a real director because I look at the great directors, and they have such command. But maybe that keeps me critical of myself. Maybe it keeps me moving forward. — Ben Affleck

It's astonishing what you learn and feel and see along the way. That's why a reporter's job, as you know, is such a joy. — Mike Wallace

The important thing is to be aware of your needs and wants, so you can go about getting them met with full consciousness. If you pretend that you have no needs for sex, for affection, for emotional support, you are lying to yourself, and you will wind up trying to get your needs met by indirect methods that don't work very well. [...]
Do not commit yourself to a lifetime of hinting and hoping — Dossie Easton

God has been good to me. My faith has been good to me in the moments of deepest suffering, doubt and fear. — Pierce Brosnan

I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake,I pray? — Henry David Thoreau

For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman; ... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do. — Henry David Thoreau

During 'Hawthorne', I was constantly trying not to be too outrageous and keep it serious. This has been so refreshing for me because it's such a good outlet for the inner me to just be. That's the whole point of 'Glee' anyways - to just be who you are and that's enough. I really feel that way on set. — Vanessa Lengies

I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! — Henry David Thoreau

there are untruths made of words and untruths made of silences, — Lauren Groff

The power of taxing people and their property is essential to the very existence of government. — James Madison

Thorin, of course, was really the grandson of the King under the Mountain, and there is no knowing what a dwarf will not dare and do for revenge or the recovery of his own. — J.R.R. Tolkien

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. — Henry David Thoreau

Mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived — Henry David Thoreau

I will love you if you don't marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else your co-star, perhaps, or Y., or even O., or anyone Z. through A., even R. Although sadly I believe it will be quite some time before two women can be allowed to marry and I will love you if you have a child, and I will love you if you have two children, or three children, or even more, although I personally think three is plenty, and I will love you if you never marry at all, and never have children, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all, and I must say that on late, cold nights I prefer this scenario out of all the scenarios I have mentioned. That, Beatrice, is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way. — Lemony Snicket

Does moping actually help humans
feel better?"
"I'm not moping."
"Of course you're not. A girl like you,
spending time with a warrior demigod like me. What's to mope about? Leaving a
wheelchair behind couldn't possibly show up on the radar compared to that. — Susan Ee

....my life is full of people talking to me without anyone saying anything, thousands of words but not one real conversation,..... — A.B. Turner

White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light. If they were permanently congealed, and small enough to be clutched, they would, perchance, be carried off by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors; but being liquid, and ample, and secured to us and our successors forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond of Kohinoor. They are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters, are they! — Henry David Thoreau

The men selected bottles of Moosehead beer and ranged themselves on plush leather chairs while Grosevoir busied himself in the bedroom. An overhead projector was set up on a cut-glass coffee table. — Patrick Lestewka

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. — Booker T. Washington