Henry David Thoreau Quotes

It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however, ancient, can be trusted without proof. ... Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

Truly the stars were given for a consolation to man.

People seldom hit what they do not aim at.

That man is richest who's pleasure are cheapest.

I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.

Friends will not only live in harmony, but in melody.

We should seek to be fellow students with the pupil, and should learn of, as well as with him, if we would be most helpful to him.

The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.

The sacredness, if there is any, is all in yourself and not in the place.

The value of any experience is measured, of course, not by the amount of money, but the amount of development we get out of it.

If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, seewhat isbefore you, and walkon intofuturity.

Our circumstances answer to our expectations and the demand of our natures.

Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself.

But they who are unconcerned about the consequences of their actions are not therefore unconcerned about their actions.

I look upon England today as an old gentleman who is travelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated fromlong housekeeping, which he has not the courage to burn.

We soon get through with nature. She excites an expectation which she cannot satisfy.

One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.

I am a citizen of the world first, and of this country at a later and more convenient hour.

Who is old enough to have learned from experience?

There are times when we have had enough even of our Friends.

Nature has left nothing to the mercy of man.

Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading?

The bad are frequently good enough to let you see how bad they are, but the good as frequently endeavor to get between you and themselves.

One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputation; another in his manners, and enjoys a good one.

A man can suffocate on courtesy.

The object of love expands and grows before us to eternity, until it includes all that is lovely, and we become all that can love.

When the true criminals are running around free, the only honorable place for a decent human being is in prisons.

Such is the never-failing beauty and accuracy of language, the most perfect art in the world; the chisel of a thousand years retouches it.

How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.

Let a slight snow come and cover the earth, and the tracks of men will show how little the woods and fields are frequented.

How sweet it would be to treat men and things, for an hour, for just what they are!

If Columbus was the first to discover the islands, Americus Vespucius and Cabot, and the Puritans, and we their descendants, havediscovered only the shores of America.

For things to change, we must change.

God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.

There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.

I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought, go about doing good.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.

The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.

But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried.

Education makes a straight ditch of a free meandering brook.

The mason asks but a narrow shelf to spring his brick from; man requires only an infinitely narrower one to spring his arch of faith from.

I love the broad margin to my life.

What wisdom, what warning can prevail against gladness? There is no law so strong that a little gladness may not transgress.

Say, Not so, and you will out circle the philosophers.

It is the man determines what is said, not the words.

We live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.

We must take root; send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day.