Henry David Thoreau Quotes
The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.
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.
Being a teacher is like being in jail; once it's on your record, you can never get rid of it.
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.
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.
If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement of a bad invention
The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.
We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.
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 find it difficult to choose our direction because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.
The fault finder will find faults even in paradise and thereby miss the joys that recognition of the positives bring.
He who parades his virtues seldom leads the parade. He who puts up with insult invites injury. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present.
As I love nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and summer and winter, I love thee, my Friend.
Where the citizen uses a mere sliver or board, the pioneer uses the whole trunk of a tree.
The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.
Many old people receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long time ago.
Give me a sentence which no intelligence can understand. There must be a kind of life and palpitation to it, and under its words akind of blood must circulate forever.
Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.
The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.
To be awake is to be completely alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.
I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky.
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point.
Unpremeditated music is the true gauge which measures the current of our thoughts; the very undertow of our life's stream.
I am too easily contented with a slight and almost animal happiness. My happiness is a good deal like that of the woodchucks.
It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.
We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than we.
If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.
Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse.
I should consider it a greater success to interest one wise and earnest soul, than a million unwise and frivolous.
I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.
There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention.
Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire.
When I meet a government which says to me, "Your money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money?
Knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.
