Henry David Thoreau Quotes (701 Quotes)

My greatest skill in life has been to want but little

There is more day left to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a passtime, if we live simply and wisely

Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.

Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.

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.

I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.

I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.

The Canadians of those days, at least, possessed a roving spirit of adventure which carried them further, in exposure to hardship and danger, than ever the New England colonist went, and led them, though not to clear and colonize the wilderness, yet.

The purity men love is like the mists which envelope the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond.

Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.

The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.

Love does not analyze its object.

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.

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling.

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

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.

Many college text-books, which were a weariness and stumbling-block when I studied, I have since read a little with pleasure and profit.

The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

Spring - An experience in immortality.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

The man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while.

No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow.

The eye is the jewel of the body.

I have heard of a dog that barked at every stranger who approached his master's premises with clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief

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.

The pleasures of the intellect are permanent, the pleasures of the heart are transitory.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.

How novel and original must be each new mans view of the universe for though the world is so old so many books have been written each object appears wholly undescribed to our experience each field of thought wholly unexplored The whole world is an America, a New World.

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador a greater wildness than in some recess of Concord.

Morning glory is the best name, it always refreshes me to see 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.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.

Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, this is no other life but this.

Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure,-as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw

I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

... we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul is the work of the soul, And good for either the work of the other.

The fire inside burns hotter than the fire outside.

Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.

Live in each season as it passes breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.