The quote database

The hand is my feeler with which I reach through isolation and darkness and seize every pleasure, every activity that my fingers encounter.

The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.

The dear privacy and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible!

Our thoughts would imply that other men have friends, though we have not.

What signifies the census--this periodical numbering of men--to one who has no friend?

My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning.

Now at least the moon is full, and I walk alone, which is best by night, if not by day always.

Our life is frittered away by detail

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived

In society you will not find health, but in nature.

I have found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one's life and sigh.

As there are silent depths in the ocean which the fiercest storm cannot reach, so there are silent, holy depths in the heart of man which the storms of sin and sorrow can never disturb.

Reverie is a loose dreaming into which a man falls; meditation is a strong, purposeful thinking into which a man rises.

Nature loves such woods, and places her own seal upon them.

Standing here in the deep, brooding silence all the wilderness seems motionless, as if the work of creation were done.

Every feature became more rigidly alpine, without, however, producing any chilling effect; for going to the mountains is like going home.

Thousands of God's wild blessings will search you and soak you as if you were sponge, and the big days will go by uncounted.

Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.

Only spread a fern frond over a man's head and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace come in.

the right to be let alone--the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men

A wise man is never so busy as in the solitary contemplation of God and the works of Nature.

A good conscience fears no witnesses, but a guilty conscience is solicitous even of solitude.

if it has in store any of what I may call the food of study and philosophy, nothing can be pleasanter than an old age of leisure