Henry David Thoreau Quotes (701 Quotes)

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.

Oh, one world at a time.

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest

I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

Heaven might be defined as the place which men avoid.

To watch this crystal globe just sent from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this somber drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another.

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.

Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.

There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.

I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks.

City life is millions of people being lonesome together.

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

Time is but the stream I go afishin in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It's thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

Youth gets together with their materials to build a bridge to the moon or maybe a palace on earth then in middle age they decide to build a woodshed with them instead.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.

I was born upon thy bank, river, My blood flows in thy stream, And thou meanderest forever; At the bottom of my dream.

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

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.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

I have lately been surveying the Walden woods so extensively and minutely that I now see it mapped in my minds eye - as, indeed, on paper - as so many mens wood-lots, and am aware when I walk there that I am at a given moment passing from such a ones wood-lot to such anothers. I fear this particular dry knowledge may affect my imagination and fancy, that it will not be easy to see so much wildness and native vigor there as formerly.

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice.

If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behavior.

A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service.

. Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces of those who live in true meekness.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are the richest.

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....

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity . . .

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.

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.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.

An unclean person is universally a slothful one.

Men have become the tools of their trade.

We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.

You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.

The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.