51
Sometimes we fail to hear or heed these voices of freedom because to us the privilege of our freedom is such an old, old story.
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52
The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness.
53
Once awakened by the silver trump of knowledge, my spirit was roused to eternal wakefulness.
54
Liberty, as the inestimable birthright of every man, converted every object into an asserter of this right.
55
If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
56
We find the fullness of life not only in options, but in commitments.
57
There are, however, times when I long to sweep away half the things I am expected to learn; for the overtaxed mind cannot enjoy the treasure it has secured at the greatest cost.
58
Nothing is more hidden from us than the illusion which lives with us day by day, and our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.
59
How to make the getting our living poetic! for if it is not poetic, it is not life but death that we get.
Henry David Thoreauverified·Journal, Volume II: 1850-September 15, 1851 (ed. Bradford Torrey)·February 18, 1851
60
if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours
61
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
62
In society you will not find health, but in nature.
63
It is not down in any map; true places never are
64
To grow in self-control, in patience, in equanimity, is to grow in strength and power; and you can only thus grow by focusing your consciousness upon a principle.
65
If he is perplexed, unhappy, restless, or wretched, let him look to himself, for there and nowhere else is the source of all his trouble.
66
Reverie is a loose dreaming into which a man falls; meditation is a strong, purposeful thinking into which a man rises.
67
These young people have had advantages of college, of European travel, and of economic study, but they are sustaining this shock of inaction.
68
Our young people feel nervously the need of putting theory into action, and respond quickly to the Settlement form of activity.
69
A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.
70
The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule.
71
Every feature became more rigidly alpine, without, however, producing any chilling effect; for going to the mountains is like going home.
72
Fears vanish as soon as one is fairly free in the wilderness.
73
The dullest eye in the world must surely be quickened by such trees as these.
74
Remember, then, that I, at least, have warned you, that the happiness of your life, and its power, and its part and rank in earth or in heaven, depend on the way you pass your days now.
75
The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way