Henry David Thoreau Quotes

The most primitive places left with us are the swamps, where the spruce still grows shaggy with usnea.

Some interests have got a footing on the earth which we have not made sufficient allowance for.

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

The cost of a thing is something called life which is given in exchange for it.

We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto.

The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.

Faint heart never won true friend. O my friend, may it come to pass, once, that when you are my friend I may be yours.

Tradition is a more interrupted and feebler memory.

In the summer we lay up a stock of experiences for the winter, as the squirrel of nuts?something for conversation in winter evenings.

To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.

The artist and his work are not to be separated. The most willfully foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly, but the deed and the doer together make ever one sober fact.

What is the use of going right over the old track again? There is an adder in the path which your own feet have worn. You must make tracks into the Unknown.

So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.

Humor, however broad and genial, takes a narrower view than enthusiasm.

In their daily life, all are braver than they know.

New earths, new themes expect us.

At least let us have healthy books.

There are many skillful apprentices, but few master workmen.

It is darker in the woods, even in common nights, than most suppose.

At the extreme north, the voyagers are obliged to dance and act plays for employment.

Music is the crystallization of sound.

The scenery when it is truly seen reacts on the life of the seer.

Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present.

My life is like a stroll upon the beach.

The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.

It makes no odds where a man goes or stays, if he is only about his business.

That we have but little faith is not sad, but that we have little faithfulness. By faithfulness faith is earned.

As a man thinks of himself, so he is.

The inhabitants of the Cape generally do not complain of their "soil," but will tell you that it is good enough for them to dry their fish on.

Associate reverently, and as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.

I am grateful for what I have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.

If you will not try, you will go to your grave with your song still inside you.

Of what use were it, pray, to get a little wood to burn, to warm your body this cold weather, if there were not a divine fire kindled at the same time to warm your spirit?

The body can feed the body only.

The only sin in the world is ignorance.

We communicate like the burrows of foxes, in silence and darkness, under ground. We are undermined by faith and love.

The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.

In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd.

Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower into a truth.

I feel as if my life had grown more outward when I can express it.

For a man to act himself, he must be perfectly free; otherwise he is in danger of losing all sense of responsibility or of self- respect.

The stars are distant and unobtrusive, but bright and enduring as our fairest and most memorable experiences.

We are superior to the joy we experience.

It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.

We must heap up a great pile of doing, for a small diameter of being.

Your richest veins don't lie nearest the surface.

We never conceive the greatness of our fates.

Hold fast to your most indefinite, waking dream.

He who eats the fruit should at least plant the seed; ay, if possible, a better seed than that whose fruit he has enjoyed.