Henry David Thoreau Quotes
I suppose that I have not many months to live: but of course I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully though I never received one cent for it.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience. But a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.
Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
Those who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts.
A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a governor.
Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.
To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exlcude yourself from the true enjoyment of it.
Now-a-days, men wear a fool's cap, and call it a liberty cap.
We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
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.
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
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
What are these pines & these birds about? What is this pond a-doing? I must know a little more.
