Henry David Thoreau Quotes

I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.

The future is too soon the past. So make perseverance your excellence and go confidently in the direction of your dreams.

If within the sophisticated man there is not an unsophisticated one, then he is but one of the devil's angels.

Where there is a brave man, in the thickest of the fight, there is the post of honor.

Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.

There is nothing more difficult to find than oneself.

Be not merely good. Be good for something.

All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.

When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?

The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.

Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

I love a life whose plot is simple.

A hero's love is as delicate as a maiden's.

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

Those whom we can love, we can hate; to others we are indifferent.

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.

With all your science can you tell me how it is, and when it is, that light comes into the soul?

Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.

We should endeavor practically in our lives to correct all the defects which our imagination detects.

No human being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.

Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to be.

There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor.

As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.

It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret in the woods.

I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which these things would be by me unavoidable.

There is no just and serene criticism as yet.

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness.

One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in.

We can never have enough of Nature.

It's only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to God.

I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour.

We find it difficult to choose our direction because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.

True kindness is a pure divine affinity, Not founded upon human consanguinity. It is a spirit, not a blood relation, Superior to family and station.

This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest posterity, content with slightly and religiously retouchingthe old material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity.

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.

If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement of a bad invention

The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.

The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours ... but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.

What the first philosopher taught the last will have to repeat.

Being a teacher is like being in jail; once it's on your record, you can never get rid of it.

I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor.

The man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while.

The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secrets of things.

You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.

What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!

So long as a man is faithful to himself, everything is in his favor, government, society, the very sun, moon, and stars.