Henry David Thoreau Quotes

One may be drunk with love without being any nearer to finding his mate.

I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society.

In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is.

And pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears of green sweet corn boiled, with the addition of salt?

But the impressions which the morning makes vanish with its dews, and not even the most "persevering mortal" can preserve the memory of its freshness to midday.

And by another year, Such as God knows, with freer air, More fruits and fairer flowers Will bear, While I droop here.

To live a better life,--this surely can be done.

We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me.

But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself.

The whole of the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour, if not more, which the day did not bring forth.

Some hard and dry book in a dead language, which you have found it impossible to read at home, but for which you still have a lingering regard, is the best to carry with you on a journey.

I never read a novel, they have so little real life and thought in them.

Do not read the newspapers.

We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies.

If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.

A modern author would have died in infancy in a ruder age.

It is good even to be a fisherman in summer and in winter.

The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen.

The fishermen say that the "thundering of the pond" scares the fishes and prevents their biting.

No domain of nature is quite closed to man at all times.

Are you in want of amusement nowadays? Then play a little at the game of getting a living. There was never anything equal to it. Do it temperately, though, and don't sweat.

What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that practically I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all.

The merely political aspect of the land is never very cheering; men are degraded when considered as the members of a political organization.

When I visit again some haunt of my youth, I am glad to find that nature wears so well. The landscape is indeed something real, and solid, and sincere, and I have not put my foot through it yet.

The lichen on the rocks is a rude and simple shield which beginning and imperfect Nature suspended there. Still hangs her wrinkledtrophy.

It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.

There have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the only traces which they have left. They are the heathen.

We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defenses only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free.

The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker.

I am a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure.

Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much.

Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even stone walls have their foundation below the frost.

Why look in the dark for light?

The past is only so heroic as we see it. It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field.

It will always be found that one flourishing institution exists and battens on another mouldering one. The Present itself is parasitic to this extent.

I am never rich in money, and I am never meanly poor.

Be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely invested.

Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savagestands on the unelastic plank of famine.

The world is a strange place for a playhouse to stand within it.

Our vices always lie in the direction of our virtues, and in their best estate are but plausible imitations of the latter.

When a shadow flits across the landscape of the soul where is the substance?

One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.

Work your vein till it is exhausted, or conducts you to a broader one.

How many fine thoughts has every man had! How few fine thoughts are expressed!

I make it my business to extract from Nature what ever nutriment she can furnish me.... I milk the sky and the earth.

To see wild life you must go forth at wild season.

To forget all about your mistakes adds to them perhaps.

What have I to do with plows? I cut another furrow than you see.

What an admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life! Indeed, the unchallenged bravery which these studies imply, is far more impressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior.

Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th,1847.