Walden; Or, Life in the Woods

Thoreau, Henry David

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in.


It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself.


Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself


Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.


As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.