Henry David Thoreau: Not Until We Are Lost

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.

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. 

If I am not I, who will be? 

When we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen. 

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

In 1848, Thoreau went to jail for refusing, as a protest against the Mexican war, to pay his poll tax. When RW Emerson came to bail him out, Emerson said, 'Henry, what are you doing in there?' Thoreau quietly replied, 'Ralph, what are you doing out there?'

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals. 

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

Trees indeed have hearts. 

Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.

Kindness to children, love for children, goodness to children-- these are the only investments that never fail.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.  

There is no remedy for love but to love more. 

When it's time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.