Henry David Thoreau Quotes

There are as many strata at different levels of life as there are leaves in a book. When on the higher levels we can remember the lower levels, but when on the lower we cannot remember the higher.

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.

I was not born to be forced.

The young pines springing up in the corn-fields from year to year are to me a refreshing fact.

Look not to legislatures and churches for your guidance, nor to any soulless incorporated bodies, but to inspirited or inspired ones.

As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.

I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake,I pray?

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.

I always see those of whom I have heard well with a slight disappointment. They are so much better than the great herd, and yet the heavens are not shivered into diamonds over their heads.

Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there?

A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be Uranus, or it may be in the shutter.

What exercise is to the body, employment is to the mind and morals.

As for men, they will hardly fail one anywhere. I had more visitors while I lived in the woods than at any other period of my life; I mean that I had some.

Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection.

The little things in life are as interesting as the big ones.

Every man must walk to the beat of his own drummer.

Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.

Truth, Goodness, Beauty - those celestial thrins,Continually are born; e'en now the Universe,With thousand throats, and eke with greener smiles,Its joy confesses at their recent birth.

The life without men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

I have made a short excursion into the new world which the Indian dwells in, or is. He begins where we leave off.

Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it.

Not secondary to the sun, she gives us his blaze again, Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day... In Heaven queen she is among the spheres; She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure.

It is the art of mankind to polish the world, and every one who works is scrubbing in some part.

The thoughtful man becomes a hermit in the thoroughfares of the marketplace.

It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.

The imagination never forgets; it is a re-membering. It is not foundationless, but most reasonable, and it alone uses all the knowledge of the intellect.

A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.

The tavern will compare favorably with the church.

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

The whole body of what is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature are the purest morality.

Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.

The virtue which we appreciate, we to some extent appropriate.

Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe.

At present our only true names are nicknames.

My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness!

We do not live by justice, but by grace.

As in many countries precious metals belong to the crown, so here more precious natural objects of rare beauty should belong to the public.

Even trees do not die without a groan.

Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature.

Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime?

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.

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.

Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.

The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.