"Can we not do without the society..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours ... but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.”

“I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that Nature with which I am acquainted.”

“We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto.”

“By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.”

“I want some one to sit beside after the day's pursuit and all its anguish, after its listening, its waitings, and its suspicions. After quarreling and reconciliation I need privacy--to be alone with you, to set this hubbub in order. For I am as neat as a cat in my habits.”

“To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.”

“I am not a bit afraid of Siegfried Sassoon. That man can think. I am afraid only of people who cannot think.”

“Heaven often protects valuable souls charged with great secrets, great ideas, by long shutting them up with their own thoughts.”

“Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers. There is, indeed, no wild beast more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate. If you are civil to the voluble they will abuse your patience; if brusque, your character.”