Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes. What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? — If you cannot tolerate the planet that it is on? Grade the ground first. If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him … he will be surrounded by grandeur. He is in the condition of a healthy and hungry man, who says to himself, — How sweet this crust is!

Henry David Thoreau
The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

Henry David Thoreau
The majority of the men of the North, and of the South and East and West, are not men of principle. If they vote, they do not sendmen to Congress on errands of humanity; but while their brothers and sisters are being scourged and hung for loving liberty,... it is the mismanagement of wood and iron and stone and gold which concerns them.

Henry David Thoreau
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point.

Henry David Thoreau
No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

Henry David Thoreau
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulette I could have worn.

Henry David Thoreau
Those services which the community will most readily pay for it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man.

Henry David Thoreau
Consider the deference which is everywhere paid to a doctor's opinion. Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine.

Henry David Thoreau
If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.

Henry David Thoreau
Man needs to know but little more than a lobster in order to catch him in his traps.

Henry David Thoreau
Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most sensitive.

Henry David Thoreau
Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have.... Shall we always study to obtain more, and not sometimes be content with less?

Henry David Thoreau
Lichens which are so thin are described in the dry state, as they are most commonly, not most truly seen. They are, indeed, dryly described.

Henry David Thoreau
Let us consider under what disadvantages Science has hitherto labored before we pronounce thus confidently on her progress.

Henry David Thoreau
Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.

Henry David Thoreau
To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions.

Henry David Thoreau
It is not in vain that man speaks to man. This is the value of literature.

Henry David Thoreau
For one that comes with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand come with an axe or rifle. What a coarse and imperfect use Indiansand hunters make of nature! No wonder that their race is so soon exterminated.

Henry David Thoreau
All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity.

Henry David Thoreau
Winter is the time for study, you know, and the colder it is the more studious we are.

Henry David Thoreau