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.

By indignities men come to dignities.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

That is the real spiritual awakening, when something emerges from within you that is deeper than who you thought you were. So, the person is still there, but one could almost say that something more powerful shines through the person.

I think it’s a very good thing to leave your country and look at it from afar.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity – the law of nature and of nations.

Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice… No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.

Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.

All the world lies warm in one heart, yet the Sierra seems to get more light than other mountains. The weather is mostly sunshine embellished with magnificent storms, and nearly everything shines from base to summit – the rocks, streams, lakes, glaciers, irised falls, and the forests of silver fir and silver pine.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

I’d go from film to film and almost detach from one world and jump in another. I was living as these people and not having a self. I didn’t know who I was. And things just get really dark.

Nature is the incarnation of thought. The world is the mind precipitated.

The world around me has changed, and I have learned to adapt but not change. But I’m changing into the woman I am meant to be.

Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.

There is no love of life without despair of life.

Existence precedes and rules essence.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

Every day is a gift from God. There’s no guarantee of tomorrow, so that tells me to see the good in this day to make the most of it.

What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly – that is the first law of nature.

Plato is my friend; Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

Our present moment is a mystery that we are part of. Here and now is where all the wonder of life lies hidden. And make no mistake about it, to strive to live completely in the present is to strive for what already is the case.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.

When you practice gratefulness, there is a sense of respect toward others.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

Your entire life only happens in this moment. The present moment is life itself. Yet, people live as if the opposite were true and treat the present moment as a stepping stone to the next moment – a means to an end.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?

Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

It’s not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren’t doing.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

You lose your individuality a huge amount when you have no money, and I certainly had that experience.

I wake up some mornings and sit and have my coffee and look out at my beautiful garden, and I go, ‚Remember how good this is. Because you can lose it.‘

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

Thinking is a wonderful tool if it’s applied. Thinking, however, can not become the master. Thinking is a very bad master. If you’re dominated by thinking then your life becomes very restricted.

Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Sin is geographical.

Because in a split second, it’s gone.