Henry David Thoreau Quotes on Man (102 Quotes)

What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can old man, - you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind,- I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that.

A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit until we have so conducted that we feel like new men in the old.

I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good.

I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse.

Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.

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

The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.

But why should not the New Englander try new adventures not lay so much stress on his grain, his potato and grass crop, and his orchards and raise other crops than these Why concern ourselves so much about our beans for seed, and not be concerned at all about a new generation of men.

The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

Water is the only drink for a wise man.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.

Always you have to contend with the stupidity of men.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

We falsely attribute to men a determined character putting together all their yesterdays and averaging them we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support it is worse than a large family he is the silent poor indeed.

Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.

How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.

That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.

Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

What I have been preparing to say is this, in wildness is the preservation of the world ... Life consists of wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued by man, its presence refreshes him.... When I would re-create myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter as a sacred place, a Sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature. In short, all good things are wild and free.

Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

Men are probably nearer the central truth in their superstitions than in their science.

A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him

If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?

What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts. In one direction or another he strives to live a supernatural life.

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

Each entered the forest at a point he, himself, had chosen, where it was darkest and there was no path. If a man does not keep pace with his companions perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance

If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.

Nations What are nations Tartars and Huns and Chinamen Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again, - if you have paid your debts and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man, then you are ready for

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs. Walden.

The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.