Best quotes from Walden

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that 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.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth