Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.

Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.

Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.

My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.

If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it.

A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.

It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.

Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

Duty is one and invariable; it requires no impossibilities, nor can it ever be disregarded with impunity.

The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but an habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance.

There are two classes of men called poets. The one cultivates life, the other art,... one satisfies hunger, the other gratifies the palate.

If you would feel the full force of a tempest, take up your residence on the top of Mount Washington, or at the Highland Light, inTruro.

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.

A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as this brain.

Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

To inherit property is not to be born - it is to be still-born, rather.

Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.

Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.

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.

Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance.

When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?

We are ever dying to one world and being born into another.

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.

How often, when we have been nearest each other bodily, have we really been farthest off! Our tongues were the witty foils with which we fenced each other off.

I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known.

How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We all live according to rule. Some men are bedridden; all world-ridden.

I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.

Christ is the prince of Reformers and Radicals.

Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.

We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.

We are ashamed of our fear; for we know that a righteous man would not suspect danger nor incur any. Wherever a man feels fear, there is an avenger.

It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning.

Voting for the right is doing nothing for it.

But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.

My eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground much than at the heavens.

The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.

It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village; to make any progress between his door and his gate.

The startings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day.

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.

Friendship is never established as an understood relation. It is a miracle which requires constant proofs. It is an exercise of the purest imagination and of the rarest faith!

Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

In literature it is only the wild that attracts us.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter

Every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us.

We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return - sending back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms.

Read not the Times, read the Eternities.