Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic.

Can there be any greater reproach than an idle learning? Learn to split wood, at least.

The schools begin with what they call the elements, and where do they end?

When the State wishes to endow an academy or university, it grants it a tract of forest land: one saw represents an academy, a gang, a university.

Do not suffer your life to be taken by newspapers.

To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence.

Men have a singular desire to be good without being good for anything, because, perchance, they think vaguely that so it will be good for them in the end.

Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.

I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.

All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and failure helps to make me sad anddoes me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it.

Why will we be imposed on by antiquity?

I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary.

How many a poor immortal soul I have met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it [an oversized home].

I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath.

I learned to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of nature, rather than a member of society.

The silence rings—it is musical & thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible—I hear the unspeakable.

Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself.

It is a very remarkable and significant fact that though no man is quite well or healthy yet every one believes practically that health is the rule & disease the exception.

If we would aim at perfection in any thing, simplicity must not be overlooked.

I am thinking by what long discipline and at what cost a man learns to speak simply at last.

As for Doing-good...I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.

The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.

We are constantly invited to be what we are.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Any fool can make a ruleAnd any fool will mind it.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.

It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and another to hear.

Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

The world is but a canvas for our imagination

It is not enough to be busy so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage.

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them

In my opinion, the sun was made to light worthier toil than this.

Wildness is the preservation of the World.

What are these pines & these birds about? What is this pond a-doing? I must know a little more.

...is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely?

I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things.

There is no remedy for love but to love more."- Henry David Thoreau

I suppose that I have not many months to live: but of course I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.

They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar