Top 100 Thoreau's Quotes
#1. There are millions of people living Thoreau's life of quiet desperation, and they do not have the language to escape from that desperation.
David Whyte
#2. The other thing that happened in 1883 was my reading of Thoreau's Walden.
Edward Carpenter
#3. Give me a bottle of hard cider, a bowl of Peterson Irish Oak in my Neerup pipe, and please, above all, give my Henry David Thoreau's Wild Apples. Do that and you will see a man contented.
Nicholas Trandahl
#4. Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau's example.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#5. Rather than earn money, it was Thoreau's idea to reduce his wants so that he would not need to buy anything. As he went around preaching this ingenious idea, the shopkeepers of Concord hoped he would drop dead.
Richard Armour
#6. I think the idea of holing up and hunkering down against the larger forces of the world has not lost its allure since Thoreau's time. If anything that instinct, or impulse, continues to reside in almost all of us, sometimes activated or bestirred and other times dormant but always present.
Rick Bass
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe.
Henry David Thoreau
#11. Zarathustra received his revelations from the archangels at age thirty, when he began his prophetic mission; Siddhartha's great renunciation of his princely life took place in his thirtieth year. Thoreau at age thirty finished his self-imposed isolation at Walden Pond.
Kevin Dann
#12. The poet's, commonly, is not a logger's path, but a woodman's. The logger and pioneer have preceded him, like John the Baptist; eaten the wild honey, it may be, but the locusts also; banished decaying wood and the spongy mosses which feed on it, and built hearths and humanized Nature for him.
Henry David Thoreau
#13. 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
#14. The poet's body even is not fed like other men's, but he sometimes tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives adivine life. By the healthful and invigorating thrills of inspiration his life is preserved to a serene old age.
Henry David Thoreau
#15. The murmurs of many a famous river on the other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to more distant dwellers on its banks;many a poet's stream, floating the helms and shields of heroes on its bosom.
Henry David Thoreau
#16. Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer's character, until we hesitate tolay them aside without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies.
Henry David Thoreau
#17. Being a teacher is like being in jail; once it's on your record, you can never get rid of it.
Henry David Thoreau
#18. At present the globe goes with a shattered constitution in its orbit ... No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise; as the laws of man's own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to health and happiness.
Henry David Thoreau
#19. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode.
Henry David Thoreau
#20. Do what you know you ought to do. Why should we ever go abroad, even across the way, to ask a neighbor's advice? There is a nearerneighbor within us incessantly telling us how we should behave. But we wait for the neighbor without to tell us of some false, easier way.
Henry David Thoreau
#21. Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher's desk.
Henry David Thoreau
#22. There is a kind of certainty that seems to characterize Jared Smith's best work, an understanding about place and the flow of spirit that makes you think of Thoreau along with a commitment as fierce as that of Pablo Neruda.
Joseph Bruchac
#23. Civil disobedience has almost always been about expression. Generally, it's nonviolent, as defined by Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, and King.
Marvin Ammori
#25. The philosopher's conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men's, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal laws.
Henry David Thoreau
#26. A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.
Henry David Thoreau
#27. I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.
Henry David Thoreau
#28. So near along life's stream are the fountains of innocence and youth making fertile its sandy margin; and the voyageur will do well to replenish his vessels often at these uncontaminated sources.
Henry David Thoreau
#29. From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may be reason for a savage's preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.
Henry David Thoreau
#33. The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort, the sort unsaid; so far behind the speaker's lips that almost it already lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated.
Henry David Thoreau
#34. It's hard for the modern generation to understand Thoreau, who lived beside a pond but didn't own water skis or a snorkel.
Loudon Wainwright III
#35. The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.
Henry David Thoreau
#36. The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.
Henry David Thoreau
#37. The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky on every side; and where were walls and fences, we see forms stretching in frolic gambols across the dusky landscape, as if Nature had strewn her fresh designs over the fields by night as models for man's art.
Henry David Thoreau
#38. Have we even so much as discovered and settled the shores? Let a man travel on foot along the coastand tell me if it looks like a discovered and settled country, and not rather, for the most part, like a desolate island, and No-Man's Land.
Henry David Thoreau
#39. It must be confessed that horses at present work too exclusively for men, rarely men for horses; and the brute degenerates in man's society.
Henry David Thoreau
#40. 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
#41. I thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten today, that I might go a- fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have learned.
Henry David Thoreau
#42. Men will tell you sometimes that "money's hard." That shows it was not made to eat, I say ... Some of those who sank with the steamer the other day found out that money was heavy too.
Henry David Thoreau
#43. Music is the sound of the universal laws promulgated. It is the only assured tone. There are in it such strains as far surpass anyman's faith in the loftiness of his destiny. Things are to be learned which it will be worth the while to learn.
Henry David Thoreau
#44. Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world?
Henry David Thoreau
#45. Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.
Henry David Thoreau
#46. All these sounds, the crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the hum of insects at noon, are the evidence of nature's health orsound state.
Henry David Thoreau
#47. Fishing has been styled 'a contemplative man's recreation,' ... and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.
Henry David Thoreau
#49. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death
Henry David Thoreau
#50. So far as my experience goes, travelers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the difficulty is imaginary; for what's the hurry?
Henry David Thoreau
#51. We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defenses only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free.
Henry David Thoreau
#52. Knight's disdain for Thoreau was bottomless - 'he had no deep insight into nature'...
Michael Finkel
#53. 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
#54. It is no more dusky in ordinary nights than our mind's habitual atmosphere, and the moonlight is as bright as our most illuminatedmoments are.
Henry David Thoreau
#55. The only people who ever get any place interesting are the people who get lost. That's why the planets are so much better company than the stars - they keep wandering back and forth across the sky and you never know where you're going to find them.
Henry David Thoreau
#56. I try to be honorable. I know that's embarrassing to hear. It's embarrassing to say. But I believe most of the nonsense that Thoreau was preaching. And I have spent a long time working on getting myself to where I could do it. Where I could live life largely on my own terms.
Robert B. Parker
#57. For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.
Henry David Thoreau
#58. That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.
Henry David Thoreau
#59. Friends will be much apart. They will respect more each other's privacy than their communion.
Henry David Thoreau
#60. The golden mean in ethics, as in physics, is the centre of the system and that about which all revolve, and though to a distant and plodding planet it be an uttermost extreme, yet one day, when that planet's year is completed, it will be found to be central.
Henry David Thoreau
#62. Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month's labor in the farmer's almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.
Henry David Thoreau
#63. Friends ... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.
Henry David Thoreau
#64. Vonnegut is one of America's basic artists, a true and worthy heir to the grand tradition of Thoreau, Whitman, Twain, Dreiser, Traven, Tom Wolfe (the real Tom Wolfe, I mean) and Steinbeck. In other words, he writes out of a concern for justice, love, honesty, and hope.
Edward Abbey
#65. 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
#66. I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice ... While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. He is a different sort of man, that's all.
Henry David Thoreau
#67. It is as hard to see one's self as to look backwards without turning around.
Henry David Thoreau
#68. I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in it's gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.
Henry David Thoreau
#69. The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.
Henry David Thoreau
#70. The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen.
Henry David Thoreau
#71. Instead of water we got here a draught of beer, a lumberer's drink, which would acclimate and naturalize a man at once,-which would make him see green, and, if he slept, dream that he heard the wind sough among the pines.
Henry David Thoreau
#72. It's not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?" - Henry David Thoreau
Brian P. Moran
#73. Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man's art would also be wild or natural in a good sense.
Henry David Thoreau
#74. Unpremeditated music is the true gauge which measures the current of our thoughts; the very undertow of our life's stream.
Henry David Thoreau
#75. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.
Henry David Thoreau
#76. Two sturdy oaks I mean, which side by side, Withstand the winter's storm, And spite of wind and tide, Grow up the meadow's pride, For both are strong Above they barely touch, but undermined Down to their deepest source, Admiring you shall find Their roots are intertwined Insep'rably.
Henry David Thoreau
#77. Simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives;
Henry David Thoreau
#79. Whenever I read anything by Henry David Thoreau I honestly feel as though he's with me. No. More like I am with him.
Nicholas Trandahl
#81. 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
#82. I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
Henry David Thoreau
#83. This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet.
Henry David Thoreau
#84. The divinity in man is the true vestal fire of the temple which is never permitted to go out, but burns as steadily and with as pure a flame on the obscure provincial altar as in Numa's temple at Rome.
Henry David Thoreau
#86. I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.
Henry David Thoreau
#87. Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. "Tell the tailors," said he, "to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch." His companion's prayer is forgotten.
Henry David Thoreau
#88. Our taste is too delicate and particular. It says nay to the poet's work, but never yea to his hope.
Henry David Thoreau
#90. Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.
Henry David Thoreau
#91. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could
a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's
eyes for an instant?
Henry David Thoreau
#92. We are apt to imagine that this hubbub of Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlors, vibrates through the universe, and is as catholic a sound as the creaking of the earth's axle. But if a man sleeps soundly, he will forget it all between sunset and dawn.
Henry David Thoreau
#93. And if the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaininggross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former?
Henry David Thoreau
#95. However much we admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or abovethe fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds.
Henry David Thoreau
#96. My prickles or smoothness are as much a quality of your hand as of myself. I cannot tell you what I am, more than a ray of the summer's sun. What I am I am, and say not. Being is the great explainer.
Henry David Thoreau
#97. Somehow I had learned from Thoreau, who doubtless learned it from Confucius, that if a man comes to do his own good for you, then must you flee that man and save yourself
Pearl S. Buck
#98. There was something refreshingly and wildly musical to my ears in the very name of the white man's canoe, reminding me of Charlevoix and Canadian Voyageurs. The batteau is a sort of mongrel between the canoe and the boat, a fur-trader's boat.
Henry David Thoreau
#99. In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd.
Henry David Thoreau
#100. To have made even one person's life a little better, that is to succeed.
Henry David Thoreau
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