Henry David Thoreau Quotes

A man of rare common sense and directness of speech, as of action; a transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and principles,Mthat was what distinguished him.

The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race.

There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness.

I seem to have dodged all my days with one or two persons, and lived upon expectation,--as if the bud would surely blossom; and soI am content to live.

I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.

If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?

There are theoretical reformers at all times, and all the world over, living on anticipation.

I love reform better than its modes.

Why do you ever mend your clothes, unless that, wearing them, you may mend your ways. Let us sing.

Can we not do without the society of our gossip a little while, - have our own thoughts to cheer us?

In order to die, you must first have lived.

How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down?

A nation may be ever so civilized and yet lack wisdom.

An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not.

There should always be some flowering and maturing of the fruits of nature in the cooking process.

If to chaffer and higgle are bad in trade, they are much worse in Love. It demands directness as of an arrow.

This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore.

Don't get to the end of your life and realize you have never lived.

Somehow strangely the vice of men gets well represented and protected but their virtue has none to plead its cause - nor any charter of immunities and rights.

I pray that the life of this spring and summer may ever lie fair in my memory.

I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice ... While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. He is a different sort of man, that's all.

Man emulates earth Earth emulates heaven Heaven emulates the Way The way emulates nature.

I lived in Judea eighteen hundred years ago, but I never knew that there was such a one as Christ among my contemporaries.

The rule is to carry as little as possible.

My themes will not be far-fetched. I will tell of homely every-day phenomena and adventures.

Oh to reach the point of death and realize one has not lived at all.

Sometimes you have to leave the world in order to learn how to live in it. Thoreau shunned society, went to the woods, and came back with a new understanding of life.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand.

It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are yourself the slave-driver.

What great interval is there between him who is caught in Africa and made a plantation slave of in the South, and him who is caught in New England and made a Unitarian minister of?

I would that I were worthy to be any man's Friend.

I love my friends very much, but I find that it is of no use to go to see them. I hate them commonly when I am near them. They belie themselves and deny me continually.

I have never met with a friend who furnished me sea-room. I have only tacked a few times and come to anchor - not sailed - made no voyage, carried no venture.

A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.

The discoveries which we make abroad are special and particular; those which we make at home are general and significant. The further off, the nearer the surface. The nearer home, the deeper.

Nature would not appear so rich, the profusion so rich, if we knew a use for everything.

I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that Nature with which I am acquainted.

Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe.

In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven.

Shall a man not have his spring as well as the plants?

If we dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak truth.

There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.

It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain.

The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow,-one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness.

Our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever.

If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you ... break the law.

The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last.

Those undeserved joys which come uncalled and make us more pleased than grateful are they that sing.

Man is but the place where I stand.