Henry David Thoreau Quotes

1,894 Sourced Quotes

Plainly the fox belongs to a different order of things from that which reigns in the village. Our courts, though they offer a bounty for his hide, and our pulpits, though they draw many a moral from his cunning, are in few senses contemporary with his free forest life.

Henry David Thoreau
I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung.

Henry David Thoreau
I seem to have dodged all my days with one or two persons, and lived upon expectation,--as if the bud would surely blossom; and soI am content to live.

Henry David Thoreau
To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has left.

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

Henry David Thoreau
The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.

Henry David Thoreau
There are some things which a man never speaks of, which are much finer kept silent about. To the highest communications we only lend a silent ear.

Henry David Thoreau
It is far more independent to travel on foot. You have to sacrifice so much to the horse. You cannot choose the most agreeable places in which to spend the noon., commanding the finest views, because commonly there is no water there, or you cannot get there with your horse.

Henry David Thoreau
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.

Henry David Thoreau
A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

Henry David Thoreau
Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts.

Henry David Thoreau
I have found that hollow, which even I had relied on for solid.

Henry David Thoreau
The question is whether you can bear freedom. At present the vast majority of men, whether white or black, require the discipline of labor which enslaves them for their own good.

Henry David Thoreau
If we dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak truth.

Henry David Thoreau
Men must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one.

Henry David Thoreau
I should have liked to come across a large community of pines, which had never been invaded by the lumbering army.

Henry David Thoreau
I am amused to see from my window here how busily a man has divided and staked off his domain. God must smile at his puny fences running hither and thither everywhere over the land.

Henry David Thoreau
The murmurs of many a famous river on the other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to more distant dwellers on its banks;many a poet's stream, floating the helms and shields of heroes on its bosom.

Henry David Thoreau
The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment!

Henry David Thoreau
Show me two villages, one embowered in trees and blazing with all the glories of October, the other a merely trivial and treelesswaste, or with only a single tree or two for suicides, and I shall be sure that in the latter will be found the most starved and bigoted religionists and the most desperate drinkers.

Henry David Thoreau