Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Tramping is too easy with all this money. My days were more exciting when I was penniless and had to forage around for my next meal... I've decided that I'm going to live this life for some time to come. The freedom and simple beauty of it is just too good to pass up.

You don't need money to be free. You can just say if you don't need stuff, you're always free.

My parents instilled a really good work ethic from when I was little - if you want to have money to spend on holidays, you earn it. So I've always been someone who wanted to be able to survive by myself, but I think you have to let down the barriers a little bit - let other people in.

Only by the sweat of my own brow. I am a totally working man.

you can survive only if nothing is necessary to you

I made these Sierra trips, carrying only a sackful of bread with a little tea and sugar, and was thus independent and free.

I was amazed that what I needed to survive could be carried on my back. And, most surprising of all, that I could carry it.

Unless you're living on the street and surviving on a diet of discarded turkey drumsticks, there's no point in being gloomy. We've spent too long trying to cheer ourselves up by spending money on brightly coloured things we don't really need. We've stopped using our imaginations.

I live and work alone and travel light, relying largely on my memory and making a point of letting intuition guide my way.

Astride a horse I am not, nor camel-like carry a load, Subjects I have none, nor follow any sultan's code; I worry not for what exists, nor fret for what is lost, I breathe with extreme ease, and live at very little cost.

I was 20 years old. My entire possessions consisted of $5 and a sewing machine.

To be independent for the comforts of life, we must fabricate them ourselves

I think there is a very powerful wish that we all have of being self-contained and having sort of opted out or choosing to remove ourselves from society and to have no ties and no obligations, and even no possessions. To be free in a particular way.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

I would never allow anyone to give me money, no difference how badly I needed it. I wanted literally to earn my living.

When a man cuts himself absolutely adrift from custom, what an astonishingly light spar floats him! How few his wants are, after all!

When I moved to L.A., I had nothing but a computer, a lighting set, and a suitcase.

Even in 'Khatron,' I used to wash my own clothes.

I paint my own nails and only get my hair cut when it really needs it.

I want to earn it, I don't want anything given to me.

Money isn't automatically freedom. You need to look carefully at what you're doing to earn the money before you can conclude that you are, in practice, free. This is a cost-benefit analysis we should all perform on our own lives.

Never own more than you can carry in both hands at a dead run.

Someone who goes with a half a loaf of bread to a small place that fits like a nest around him, someone who wants no more, who is not himself longed for by anyone else. He is a letter to everyone. You open it. It says, Live.

I've learned all I need to know to live under a bed.

He is always a slave who cannot live on little.