Henry David Thoreau Quotes on Man (102 Quotes)



    Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

    The man of genius knows what he is aiming at nobody else knows. And he alone knows when something comes between him and his object. In the course of generations, however, men will excuse you for not doing as they do, if you will bring enough to pass in your own way.

    In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowedfor, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be agreat calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify.

    The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor



    Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.

    The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.

    This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments Why should I feel lonely Is not our planet in the Milky Way This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

    I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

    Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made Or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are NOT good.

    Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

    I came into this world, not cheifly to make this a good place to live in, but live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but something and because he can not do everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong.

    You think that I am impoverishing myself by withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web or chrysalis, and, nymph-like, shall ere long burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted for a higher society.

    If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

    In the long run, men only hit what they aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had better aim at something high.


    A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

    Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.

    I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent

    A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

    Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

    Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence of it in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. It would not leave them narrow-minded and bigoted.

    If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

    How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought We all live according to rule. Some men are bedridden all world-ridden.

    I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

    Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow.

    Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.

    When I hear a grown man or woman say, 'Once I had faith in men, now I have not,' I am inclined to ask, 'Who are you whom the world has disappointed Have not you rather disappointed the world'

    Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful.

    If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.

    There are continents and seas in the moral world, to which every man is an isthmus or inlet, yet unexplored by him.

    Talk about slavery It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone... I never yet met with, or heard of, a judge who was not a slave of this kind, and so the finest and most unfailing weapon of injustice. He fetches a slightly higher price than the black men only because he is a more valuable slave.

    There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.

    While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

    In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.

    It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.


    While some men believe in the infinite, some ponds will be thought to be bottomless

    Men will lie on their backs, talking about the the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

    If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music in which he hears, however measured, or far away.

    Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive. As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

    All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.

    What a man thinks of himself, that is what determines his fate. It is important what one thinks of themselves, much more important than what others think.

    Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts -- a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments.

    How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

    Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

    The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste....


    This American government what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity It has not the vitality and force of a single living man for a single man can bend it to his will.


    More Henry David Thoreau Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Man - Life - Nature - Mind - Friendship - World - Truth - Money & Wealth - Thought & Thinking - Law & Regulation - Love - Morning - Dreams - Society & Civilization - Time - God - Work & Career - Wisdom & Knowledge - Success - View All Henry David Thoreau Quotations

    More Henry David Thoreau Quotations (By Book Titles)


    - Walden, or Life in the Woods
    - Walden

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