Henry David Thoreau Quotes

It is a great art to saunter !

Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.

I love the leisurely amplitude, the spaciousness, of taking a walk, of heading somewhere, anywhere, on foot. I love the sheer adventure of it: setting out and taking off.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.

If it's a beautiful day, I love taking walks. The walks are always aimless.

Close your eyes. You might try saying. . . something like this: "The sun is shining overhead. The sky is blue and sparkling. Nature is calm and in control of the world-and I, as nature's child, am in tune with the Universe." Or-better still-pray!

When there's nothing to do, you do nothing slowly and intently.

The whole art of meditation is, how to leave the personality easily, move to the center, and be not a person. Just to be and not be a person is the whole art of meditation, the whole art of inner ecstasy.

Hiking - I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike! Do you know the origin of that word 'saunter?' It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, "A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them."

Any fool can be fussy and rid himself of energy all over the place, but a man has to have something in him before he can settle down to do nothing.

A man can never have too much Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little son, I would christen him Nothing-To-Do; he should do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his element as long as he is operative. I am altogether for the life contemplative.

The ultimate happiness is doing nothing.

This walking business is overrated: I mastered the art of doing it when I was quite small, and in any case, what are taxis for?

By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream

When you think of Buddhism, you're likely to think of peace and tranquility.

My favorite pastime is staring out the window. When I go on tour, I can spend hours and hours just staring out the window, thinking about nothing. I love all that.

To be at ease is better than to be at business.

I am here for 5 days to enjoy myself and rest. Israel is a beautiful country and the audience is full of passion and I enjoy everything there is here.

the beauty of doing nothing

You think of travellers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time.

Even though I'm resting I'm accomplishing something by sewing that shirt that I've been meaning to sew for weeks. And it's relaxing. It's so very meditative and quiet and enjoyable. But at least I'm producing something. I'm being productive in some way. I have a very hard time being completely idle.

Doing nothing feels like floating on warm water to me. Delightful, perfect.

The trick is, when there is nothing to do, do nothing.

I loafe and invite my soul.

You can't imagine what a pleasure this complete laziness is to me: not a thought in my brain- you might send a ball rolling through it!