Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.
I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
As for the dispute about solitude and society, any comparison is impertinent. It is an idling down on the plane at the base of a mountain, instead of climbing steadily to its top.
The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile,... the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the annals of the world.
How prompt we are to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our bodies; how slow to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our souls!
Poetry is the only life got, the only work done, the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when he has put all the world under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes.
I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon.
A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.
When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in. I love to wander and muse over them in their graves. Here are no lying nor vain epitaphs.
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.
Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law.
The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode.
How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding ; How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile.
Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life.
The truth is, there is money buried everywhere, and you have only to go to work to find it.
Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.
No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.
If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life.
Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you'll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books. And then you'll be in as much trouble as I am!
A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.
For a man needs only to be turned around once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost...Not 'til we are lost do we begin to find ourselves.
The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.
The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.
A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.
The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree's, so copious and so delicious to both sight and scent.