Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Some simple dishes recommend themselves to our imaginations as well as palates.

Spring. March fans it, April christens it, and May puts on its jacket and trousers.

Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

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.

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.

Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping.

All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.

The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.

It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being.

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?

The opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters commonly causes a pond to break up earlier; for the water, agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice.

A true Friendship is as wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to the guidance of their love, and know no otherlaw nor kindness.

All that is told of the sea has a fabulous sound to an inhabitant of the land and all its products have a certain fabulous quality, as if they belonged to another planet.

I do not know what right I have to so much happiness, but rather hold it in reserve till the time of my desert.

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.

Heroes are often the most ordinary of men.

In the production of the necessaries of life Nature is ready enough to assist man.

Keep up the fires of thought, and all will go well.

Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.

Go not to the object; let the object come to you.

Lose the world, get lost in it, and find your soul.

In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.

Improve every opportunity to be melancholy.

What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

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

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.

The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective.

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.

Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!

The heart is forever inexperienced.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

Your religion is where your love is.

Why should we be startled by death? Life is a constant putting off of the mortal coil - coat, cuticle, flesh and bones, all old clothes.

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.

Even the best things are not equal to their fame.

If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even,- for that is the seat of sympathy,-he forthwith sets about reforming the world.

I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen much; what I got by going to Canada was a cold.