Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.

Henry David Thoreau
I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

Henry David Thoreau
What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.

Henry David Thoreau
When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc... I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural...

Henry David Thoreau
The chickadee and nuthatch are more inspiring society than statesmen and philosophers, and we shall return to these last as to more vulgar companions.

Henry David Thoreau
We never exchange more than three words with a Friend in our lives on that level to which our thoughts and feelings almost habitually rise.

Henry David Thoreau
I had a classmate who fitted for college by the lamps of a lighthouse, which was more light, we think, than the University afforded.

Henry David Thoreau
We must heap up a great pile of doing, for a small diameter of being.

Henry David Thoreau
A fortified town is like a man cased in the heavy armor of antiquity, with a horse-load of broadswords and small arms slung to him, endeavoring to go about his business.

Henry David Thoreau
The only fruit which even much living yields seems to be often only some trivial success,--the ability to do some slight thing better. We make conquest only of husks and shells for the most part,--at least apparently,--but sometimes these are cinnamon and spices, you know.

Henry David Thoreau
I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer.

Henry David Thoreau
I desire that there be as many different persons in the world as possible; I would have each one be very careful to find out and preserve his own way.

Henry David Thoreau
The tavern will compare favorably with the church. The church is the place where prayers and sermons are delivered, but the tavernis where they are to take effect, and if the former are good, the latter cannot be bad.

Henry David Thoreau
So far as my experience goes, travelers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the difficulty is imaginary; for what's the hurry?

Henry David Thoreau
We have need to be earth-born as well as heaven-born, gegeneis, as was said of the Titans of old, or in a better sense than they.

Henry David Thoreau
The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among Englishmen and Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent,--others merely sensible, as the phrase is,--others prophetic.

Henry David Thoreau
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.

Henry David Thoreau
We have reason to be grateful for celestial phenomena, for they chiefly answer to the ideal in man.

Henry David Thoreau
Men are in the main alike, but they were made several in order that they might be various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly quite as well as another; if a high one, individual excellence is to be regarded.

Henry David Thoreau
What avail all your scholarly accomplishments and learning, compared with wisdom and manhood? To omit his other behavior, see whata work this comparatively unread and unlettered man wrote within six weeks. Where is our professor of belles-lettres, or of logic and rhetoric, who can write so well?

Henry David Thoreau
How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a slight outrage against universal laws.

Henry David Thoreau
A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a governor.

Henry David Thoreau
There is none who does not lie hourly in the respect he pays to false appearance.

Henry David Thoreau
The experience of every past moment but belies the faith of each present.

Henry David Thoreau
We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narratives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is no instance. To write a true work of fiction even is only to take leisure and liberty to describe some things more exactly as they are.

Henry David Thoreau
Homer and Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing.

Henry David Thoreau
The hounding of a dog pursuing a fox or other animal in the horizon may have first suggested the notes of the hunting-horn to alternate with and relieve the lungs of the dog. This natural bugle long resounded in the woods of the ancient world before the horn was invented.

Henry David Thoreau
I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account...

Henry David Thoreau
I think it will be found that he who speaks with most authority on a given subject is not ignorant of what has been said by his predecessors. He will take his place in a regular order, and substantially add his own knowledge to the knowledge of previous generations.

Henry David Thoreau
One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living.

Henry David Thoreau