Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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

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

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
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
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
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
The most primitive places left with us are the swamps, where the spruce still grows shaggy with usnea.

Henry David Thoreau
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.
Aim above morality.
Be not simply good;
be good for something.
All fables, indeed, have their morals; but the innocent enjoy the story. Let nothing come between you and the light. Respect men and brothers only. When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God

Henry David Thoreau
It is a relief to read some true book, wherein all are equally dead,--equally alive. I think the best parts of Shakespeare would only be enhanced by the most thrilling and affecting events. I have found it so. And so much the more, as they are not intended for consolation.

Henry David Thoreau
Since all things are good, men fail at last to distinguish which is the bane and which the antidote.

Henry David Thoreau
When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?

Henry David Thoreau
Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.

Henry David Thoreau
Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.

Henry David Thoreau
Late in the afternoon we passed a man on the shore fishing with a long birch pole.... The characteristics and pursuits of various ages and races of men are always existing in epitome in every neighborhood. The pleasures of my earliest youth have become the inheritance of other men. This man is still a fisher, and belongs to an era in which I myself have lived.

Henry David Thoreau
When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality?

Henry David Thoreau
What we want is not mainly to colonize Nebraska with free men, but to colonize Massachusetts with free men-to be free ourselves. As the enterprise of a few individuals, that is brave and practical; but as the enterprise of the State, it is cowardice and imbecility. What odds where we squat, or bow much ground we cover? It is not the soil that we would make free, but men.

Henry David Thoreau
Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man's art would also be wild or natural in a good sense.

Henry David Thoreau
Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. The heavens seem to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and distinct. Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a Scandinavian night. The winter is an arctic summer.

Henry David Thoreau
The lover wants no partiality. He says, Be so kind as to be just.

Henry David Thoreau
I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plow for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o'-clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen.

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
I do believe in simplicity. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem he first frees the equation from all encumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms.

Henry David Thoreau
Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which would be more disreputable.

Henry David Thoreau
If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.

Henry David Thoreau
Translate a book a dozen times from one language to another, and what becomes of its style? Most books would be worn out and disappear in this ordeal. The pen which wrote it is soon destroyed, but the poem survives.

Henry David Thoreau
We have used up all our inherited freedom, like the young bird the albumen in the egg. It is not an era of repose. If we would save our lives, we must fight for them.

Henry David Thoreau