Top 100 Henry Thoreau Quotes
#1. I would say Gary Snyder, who is from my part of the world as a poet and environmental thinker, will be read just as Henry Thoreau as John Muir will continue to be read.
Robert Hass
#2. Having reached the term of his natural life; Mwould it not be truer to say, Having reached the term of his unnatural life?
Henry David Thoreau
#3. You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you.
Henry David Thoreau
#4. Men cannot conceive of a state of things so fair that it cannot be realized.
Henry David Thoreau
#5. If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?
Henry David Thoreau
#6. Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.
Henry David Thoreau
#8. The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever checks and compensations there may be. It is not enough to tell me that you worked hard to get your gold. So does the Devil work hard. The way of transgressors may be hard in many respects.
Henry David Thoreau
#9. While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?
Henry David Thoreau
#11. You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.
Henry David Thoreau
#12. Truth, Goodness, Beauty - those celestial thrins,Continually are born; e'en now the Universe,With thousand throats, and eke with greener smiles,Its joy confesses at their recent birth.
Henry David Thoreau
#13. A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
Henry David Thoreau
#14. It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched.
Henry David Thoreau
#16. Men talk about Bible miracles because there is no miracle in their lives. Cease to gnaw that crust. There is ripe fruit over your head.
Henry David Thoreau
#17. It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course.
Henry David Thoreau
#18. As with our colleges, so with a hundred 'modern improvements'; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance.
Henry David Thoreau
#19. The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.
Henry David Thoreau
#20. One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then
Henry David Thoreau
#22. We have need to be as sturdy pioneers still as Miles Standish, or Church, or Lovewell. We are to follow on another trail, it is true, but one as convenient for ambushes. What if the Indians are exterminated, are not savages as grim prowling about the clearings today?
Henry David Thoreau
#23. 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
#24. I do not know but thoughts written down thus in a journal might be printed in the same form with greater advantage than if the related ones were brought together into separate essays.
Henry David Thoreau
#26. A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.
Henry David Thoreau
#28. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy evil, that they may no longer have have it to regret.
Henry David Thoreau
#29. In an ancient and dead language, any recognition of living nature attracts us. These are such sentences as were written while grass grew and water ran. It is no small recommendation when a book will stand the test of mere unobstructed sunshine and daylight.
Henry David Thoreau
#30. 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 whole day as a spectulator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
Henry David Thoreau
#31. The tragedy in a man's life is what dies inside of him while he lives.
Henry David Thoreau
#32. Homer and Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing.
Henry David Thoreau
#33. But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted.
Henry David Thoreau
#37. Winter is the time for study, you know, and the colder it is the more studious we are.
Henry David Thoreau
#39. I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.
Henry David Thoreau
#40. Surely, we are provided with senses as well fitted to penetrate the spaces of the real, the substantial, the eternal, as these outward are to penetrate the material universe. Veias, Menu, Zoroaster, Socrates, Christ, Shakespeare, Swedenborg,
these are some of our astronomers.
Henry David Thoreau
#41. 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
#42. If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.
Henry David Thoreau
#43. Though the words Canada East on the map stretch over many rivers and lakes and unexplored wildernesses, the actual Canada, which might be the colored portion of the map, is but a little clearing on the banks of the river, which one of those syllables would more than cover.
Henry David Thoreau
#44. The conductor shouts "All aboard!" when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over - and it will be called, and will be, "A melancholy accident.
Henry David Thoreau
#49. Even poetry, you know, is in one sense an infinite brag & exaggeration.
Henry David Thoreau
#50. The Xanthus or Scamander is not a mere dry channel and bed of a mountain torrent, but fed by the ever-flowing springs of fame ...
and I trust that I may be allowed to associate our muddy but much abused Concord River with the most famous in history.
Henry David Thoreau
#51. A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double; the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the forepart plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her until you tread on it.
Henry David Thoreau
#52. I wanted to live deep and suck out the all the marrow of life ( ... ).
Henry David Thoreau
#53. There is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine, is no more a pine than a dead human carcass is a man.
Henry David Thoreau
#55. We go on dating from Cold Fridays and Great Snows; but a little colder Friday, or greater snow would put a period to man's existence on the globe.
Henry David Thoreau
#56. An island always pleases my imagination, even the smallest, as a small continent and integral portion of the globe. I have a fancyfor building my hut on one. Even a bare, grassy isle, which I can see entirely over at a glance, has some undefined and mysterious charm for me.
Henry David Thoreau
#57. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?
Henry David Thoreau
#58. The most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively,as if the speaker had a right to know what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been well learned.
Henry David Thoreau
#59. There is no doubt that the loftiest written wisdom is either rhymed or in some way musically measured,
is, in form as well as substance, poetry; and a volume which should contain the condensed wisdom of mankind need not have one rhythmless line.
Henry David Thoreau
#60. Ktaadnis an Indian word signifying highest land, ... very few, even among backwoodsmen and hunters, have ever climbed it, andit will be a long time before the tide of fashionable travel sets that way.
Henry David Thoreau
#61. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.
Henry David Thoreau
#65. Law never made man a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made agents of injustice.
Henry David Thoreau
#66. Man emulates earth Earth emulates heaven Heaven emulates the Way The way emulates nature.
Henry David Thoreau
#67. How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.
Henry David Thoreau
#69. Give me the old familiar world, post-office and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten.
Henry David Thoreau
#70. No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?
Henry David Thoreau
#71. The forests are held cheap after the white pine has been culled out; and the explorers and hunters pray for rain only to clear theatmosphere of smoke.
Henry David Thoreau
#72. I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. It never jests. It is cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and relie on the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
#73. The indescribable innocence of and beneficence of Nature,-of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter,-such health, such cheer, they afford forever!
Henry David Thoreau
#74. It is remarkable that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or acknowledge the personality of God. Some Earl of Bridgewater, thinking it better late than never, has provided for it in his will. It is a sad mistake.
Henry David Thoreau
#75. The outward is only the outside of that which is within. Men are not concealed under habits, but are revealed by them; they are their true clothes.
Henry David Thoreau
#76. The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait until that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off.
Henry David Thoreau
#78. Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness the polisher of his sentences. He could afford to lose his Sharp's rifles, while he retained his faculty of speech,
a Sharp's rifle of infinitely surer and longer range.
Henry David Thoreau
#79. Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe.
Henry David Thoreau
#81. The poet will maintain serenity in spite of all disappointments. He is expected to preserve an unconcerned and healthy outlook over the world, while he lives.
Henry David Thoreau
#82. As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as theevening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.
Henry David Thoreau
#83. The past is only so heroic as we see it. It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field.
Henry David Thoreau
#84. The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer.
Henry David Thoreau
#85. A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.
Henry David Thoreau
#86. Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading?
Henry David Thoreau
#87. 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.
Henry David Thoreau
#88. The chief want, in every state that I have been into, was a high and earnest purpose in its inhabitants.
Henry David Thoreau
#89. I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
Henry David Thoreau
#90. Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I'm astonished to perceive how good a purpose the level of excitement is made to serve.
Henry David Thoreau
#91. Still we live meanly like ants, though the fable tells us we were long ago changed into men.
Henry David Thoreau
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.
Henry David Thoreau
#95. With all your science can you tell me how it is, and when it is, that light comes into the soul?
Henry David Thoreau
#96. It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another.
Henry David Thoreau
#98. Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.
Henry David Thoreau
#99. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
Henry David Thoreau
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