Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Ah, I could lay me down in this long grass And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind Blow over me

In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.

We live in such a noisy world that we need to stop and just let things happen. Let it grow.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing - just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park?

There is such a peace out in the middle of the desert. There's nothing like it.

I stood tip-toe upon a little hill, The air was cooling, and so very still, That the sweet buds which with a modest pride Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside, Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems, Had not yet lost those starry diadems Caught from the early sobbing of the morn.

Seek out a tree and let it teach you stillness.

come back believer in shade believer in silence and elegance believer in ferns believer in patience believer in the rain

In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be; Where all the noises, that on peace intrude, Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee, Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude.

When you look at a tree and perceive its stillness, you become still yourself. You connect with it at a very deep level. You feel a oneness with whatever you perceive in and through stillness.

If your mind is still... You can sense the peace that emanates from the earth.

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over the dunes, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over a pond and a stand of pines. Get a life in which you pay attention to the baby as she scowls with concentration when she tried to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out, Stay awhile.

I see pictures all the time. I could stay for hours and watch a raindrop.

When you are waiting for a train, don't keep perpetually looking to see if it is coming. The time of its arrival is the business of the conductor, not yours. It will not come any sooner for all your nervous glances and your impatient pacing, and you will save strength if you will keep quiet. After we discover that the people who sit still on a long railroad journey reach that journey's end at precisely the same time as those who "fuss" continually, we have a valuable piece of information which we should not fail to put to practical use.

What I really like to do is to sit quietly and write. All that other stuff is a problem. Publication to reception to negotiation to... everything, it's a problem. And I like to sit outside for long periods of time and just be in the tranquility of nature. That's what I like.

Winds and waters keepA hush more dead than any sleep.

I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake,I pray?

Within each of us there is a silence as vast as the universe. We long for it. We can return to it.

So still were the big woods where I sat, sound might not yet have been born.

I lean and loaf at my ease... observing a spear of summer grass.

Nobody can keep on being angry if she looks into the heart of a pansy for a little while.

The charm of variety there was not, nor the excitement of incident; but I liked peace so well, and sought stimulus so little, that when the latter came I almost felt it a disturbance, and rather still wished it had held aloof.