Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Such is beauty ever,-neither here nor there, now nor then,-neither in Rome nor in Athens, but wherever there is a soul to admire.
It often happens that a man develops a deeper love and friendship with his pet cat or dog than he does with most of the other humans in his life.
I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor.
It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.
We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.
Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.
You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you.
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.
Not till we are completely lost, or turned round, do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.
One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense.
It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.
The thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of. The mite which November contributes becomes equal in value to the bounty of July.
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
Even the elephant carries but a small trunk on his journeys. The perfection of traveling is to travel without baggage.
The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor
A man may esteem himself happy when that which is his food is also his medicine.
The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.
The scenery, when it is truly seen, reacts on the life of the seer. How to live. How to get the most of life.... How to extract its honey from the flower of the world.
There is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine, is no more a pine than a dead human carcass is a man.
As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.
It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.
It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile as a fungus or a lichen.
Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.
