Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.

Henry David Thoreau
Have you learned the alphabet of heaven and can count three? Do you know the number of God's family? Can you put mysteries into words? Do you presume to fable of the ineffable? Pray, what geographer are you, that speak of heaven's topography? Whose friend are you that speak of God's personality? … Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.

Henry David Thoreau
He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.

Henry David Thoreau
Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.

Henry David Thoreau
The New Testament is an invaluable book, though I confess to having been slightly prejudiced against it in my very early days by the church and the Sabbath school, so that it seemed, before I read it, to be the yellowest book in the catalogue. Yet I early escaped from their meshes. It was hard to get the commentaries out of one's head and taste its true flavor. — I think that Pilgrim's Progress is the best sermon which has been preached from this text; almost all other sermons that I have heard, or heard of, have been but poor imitations of this. — It would be a poor story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ because the book has been edited by Christians.

Henry David Thoreau
Before the land rose out of the ocean, and became dry land, chaos reigned; and between high and low water mark, where she is partially disrobed and rising, a sort of chaos reigns still, which only anomalous creatures can inhabit.

Henry David Thoreau
The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence.

Henry David Thoreau
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison... the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.

Henry David Thoreau
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare.

Henry David Thoreau
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Henry David Thoreau
Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves....

Henry David Thoreau
I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice... While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. He is a different sort of man, that's all.

Henry David Thoreau
Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.

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
I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen much; what I got by going to Canada was a cold.

Henry David Thoreau
On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.

Henry David Thoreau
As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.

Henry David Thoreau
Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.

Henry David Thoreau
I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow-birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.

Henry David Thoreau
It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

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

Henry David Thoreau
Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.

Henry David Thoreau
Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? Or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are NOT good?

Henry David Thoreau
All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.

Henry David Thoreau
I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha, or Christ, or Swedenborg, who are without the pale of their churches. It is necessary not to be Christian to appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of Christ. I know that some will have hard thoughts of me, when they hear their Christ named beside my Buddha, yet I am sure that I am willing they should love their Christ more than my Buddha, for the love is the main thing, and I like him too.

Henry David Thoreau
Who could believe in prophecies of Daniel or of Miller that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds?

Henry David Thoreau
Is it the lumberman, then, who is the friend and lover of the pine, stands nearest to it, and understands its nature best? Is it the tanner who has barked it, or he who has boxed it for turpentine, whom posterity will fable to have been changed into a pine at last? No! no! it is the poet: he it is who makes the truest use of the pine-who does not fondle it with an axe, nor tickle it with a saw, nor stroke it with a plane....

Henry David Thoreau
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.

Henry David Thoreau
That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess.

Henry David Thoreau
Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

Henry David Thoreau