Top 100 Henry David Thoreau Quotes
#1. Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
#2. 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. I do not wish to go below now.
Henry David Thoreau
#3. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.
Henry David Thoreau
#4. The most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants.
Henry David Thoreau
#5. I had but three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship; three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up.
Henry David Thoreau
#6. The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.
Henry David Thoreau
#7. With all your science can you tell me how it is, and when it is, that light comes into the soul?
Henry David Thoreau
#8. But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried.
Henry David Thoreau
#9. To inherit property is not to be born - it is to be still-born, rather.
Henry David Thoreau
#10. My life more civil is and free
Than any civil polity
Ye princes, keep your realms
And circumscribed power
Not wide as are my dreams
Nor rich as is this hour
Henry David Thoreau
#12. I suppose that the great questions of "Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge Absolute," which used to be discussed at Concord, are still unsettled.
Henry David Thoreau
#13. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.
Henry David Thoreau
#14. If I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.
Henry David Thoreau
#15. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.
Henry David Thoreau
#16. Look not to legislatures and churches for your guidance, nor to any soulless incorporated bodies, but to inspirited or inspired ones.
Henry David Thoreau
#17. Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime?
Henry David Thoreau
#18. If labor mainly, or to any considerable degree, serves the purpose of a police, to keep men out of mischief, it indicates a rottenness at the foundation of our community.
Henry David Thoreau
#19. The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as what are called the "means" are increased.
Henry David Thoreau
#20. So soon did we, wayfarers, begin to learn that man's life is rounded with the same few facts, the same simple relations everywhere, and it is vain to travel to find it new.
Henry David Thoreau
#21. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.
Henry David Thoreau
#22. If you're familiar with a principle you don't have to be familiar with all of its applications.
Henry David Thoreau
#23. The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.
Henry David Thoreau
#24. Talk of mysteries! - Think of our life in nature, - daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, - rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?
Henry David Thoreau
#26. Nothing can be more useful to you than a determination not to be hurried.
Henry David Thoreau
#27. To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.
Henry David Thoreau
#28. Everything that is printed and bound in a book contains some echo at least of the best that is in literature.
Henry David Thoreau
#30. I am a happy camper so I guess I'm doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.
Henry David Thoreau
#31. The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard
Henry David Thoreau
#33. The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such as shared the serenity of nature.
Henry David Thoreau
#34. I love my friends very much, but I find that it is of no use to go to see them. I hate them commonly when I am near them. They belie themselves and deny me continually.
Henry David Thoreau
#35. A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land.
Henry David Thoreau
#36. The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience.
Henry David Thoreau
#37. It will be seen that we contemplate a time when man's will shall be law to the physical world, and he shall no longer be deterredby such abstractions as time and space, height and depth, weight and hardness, but shall indeed be the lord of creation.
Henry David Thoreau
#38. Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns.
Henry David Thoreau
#40. Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.
[Letter to Harrison Blake; November 16, 1857]
Henry David Thoreau
#41. I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer.
Henry David Thoreau
#43. Surely the fates are forever kind, though Nature's laws are more immutable than any despot's, yet to man's daily life they rarelyseem rigid, but permit him to relax with license in summer weather. He is not harshly reminded of the things he may not do.
Henry David Thoreau
#44. Such is beauty ever,-neither here nor there, now nor then,-neither in Rome nor in Athens, but wherever there is a soul to admire.
Henry David Thoreau
#45. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery.
Henry David Thoreau
#46. If one hesitates in his path, let him not proceed. Let him respect his doubts, for doubts, too, may have some divinity in them.
Henry David Thoreau
#47. Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.
Henry David Thoreau
#48. God is alone,-but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion.
Henry David Thoreau
#49. It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
Henry David Thoreau
#50. All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story.
Henry David Thoreau
#52. To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health.
Henry David Thoreau
#53. 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.
Henry David Thoreau
#55. The inhabitants of earth behold commonly but the dark and shadowy under side of heaven's pavement; it is only when seen at a favorable angle in the horizon, morning or evening, that some faint streaks of the rich lining of the clouds are revealed.
Henry David Thoreau
#56. As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this country.
Henry David Thoreau
#57. Many old people receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long time ago.
Henry David Thoreau
#58. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.
Henry David Thoreau
#59. We are all poor in respect to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded by luxuries ... for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them.
Henry David Thoreau
#60. This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.
Henry David Thoreau
#61. I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know!
Henry David Thoreau
#62. It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.
Henry David Thoreau
#63. Far from New England's blustering shore,New England's worm her hulk shall bore,And sink her in the Indian seas,Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas.
Henry David Thoreau
#64. I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak.
Henry David Thoreau
#66. For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it.
Henry David Thoreau
#68. Do not despair of your life. You have force enough to overcome your obstacles.
Henry David Thoreau
#69. Which is the best man to deal with,-he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?
Henry David Thoreau
#70. The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow,-one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness.
Henry David Thoreau
#71. A puritan may go to his brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle. Not that food which entereth into the mouth defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten. It is neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors;
Henry David Thoreau
#72. The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its essence.
Henry David Thoreau
#73. If within the sophisticated man there is not an unsophisticated one, then he is but one of the devil's angels.
Henry David Thoreau
#74. Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.
Henry David Thoreau
#75. When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a living ... I thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I could do.
Henry David Thoreau
#76. I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters.
Henry David Thoreau
#77. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.
Henry David Thoreau
#78. The inhabitants of the Cape generally do not complain of their "soil," but will tell you that it is good enough for them to dry their fish on.
Henry David Thoreau
#79. Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.
Henry David Thoreau
#80. The intercourse of the sexes, I have dreamed, is incredibly beautiful, too fair to be remembered. I have had thoughts about it, but they are among the most fleeting and irrecoverable in my experience.
Henry David Thoreau
#81. I make it my business to extract from Nature what ever nutriment she can furnish me ... I milk the sky and the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
#83. Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever.
Henry David Thoreau
#85. My life is like a stroll upon the beach, as near to the ocean's edge as I can go.
Henry David Thoreau
#86. I have heard of many going astray even in the village streets, when the darkness was so thick you could cut it with a knife, as the saying is ...
Henry David Thoreau
#87. They make their pride," he said, "in making their dinner cost much; I make my pride in making my dinner cost little." When asked at table what dish he preferred, he answered, "The nearest.
Henry David Thoreau
#88. To be a philosopher ... is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.
Henry David Thoreau
#89. The botanist should make interest with the bees if he would know when the flowers open and when they close.
Henry David Thoreau
#90. So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn.
Henry David Thoreau
#92. When some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered yes
remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education
make them hunters.
Henry David Thoreau
#93. All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.
Henry David Thoreau
#95. If a person lost would conclude that after all he is not lost, he is not beside himself, but standing in his own old shoes on thevery spot where he is, and that for the time being he will live there; but the places that have known him, they are lost,
how much anxiety and danger would vanish.
Henry David Thoreau
#96. Letter-writing too often degenerates into a communicating of facts, and not of truths; of other men's deeds and not our thoughts.What are the convulsions of a planet, compared with the emotions of the soul? or the rising of a thousand suns, if that is not enlightened by a ray?
Henry David Thoreau
#97. You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.
Henry David Thoreau
#98. Unless we do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but apprentices, and not yet masters of the art of life.
Henry David Thoreau
#100. I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
Henry David Thoreau
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