Henry David Thoreau Quotes (701 Quotes)

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

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.

I have climbed several higher mountains without guide or path, and have found, as might be expected, that it takes only more time and patience commonly than to travel the smoothest highway

Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

All change is a miracle to contemplate but it is a miracle which is taking place every second.

What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a winter's day.

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior.

We are constantly invited to be who we are.

I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

In the love of narrow souls I make many short voyages but in vain - I find no sea room - but in great souls I sail before the wind without a watch, and never reach the shore.

I have no time to read newspapers. If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire -- thinner than the paper on which it is printed . . .

Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes.

The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.

Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters.

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.

The law will never make men free, it is men that have to make the law free.

Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.

It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.

What the banker sighs for, the meanest clown may have, - leisure and a quiet mind

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields andwoods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be coldand hungry and weary.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and for mere gluttony.

Walking is a blessing.

Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs.

Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

Even the best things are not equal to their fame.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg, by the side of which more will be laid.

Faith never makes a confession.

If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me.

I know myself as a human entity the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is no part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.

We hate the kindness which we understand.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.

We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.

There are now-a-days professors of philosophy but not philosophers.