Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know.

Henry David Thoreau
If i repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. what demon possessed me that i behaved so well?

Henry David Thoreau
She with one breath attunes the spheres,
And also my poor human heart.

Henry David Thoreau
It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

Henry David Thoreau
We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.

Henry David Thoreau
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

Henry David Thoreau
The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.

Henry David Thoreau
The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.

Henry David Thoreau
I do not wish to force my thoughts upon you, but I feel forced myself. Little as I know of Captain Brown, I would fain do my part to correct the tone and the statements of the newspapers, and of my countrymen generally, respecting his character and actions. It costs us nothing to be just. We can at least express our sympathy with, and admiration of, him and his companions, and that is what I now propose to do.

Henry David Thoreau
You think that I am impoverishing myself withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web or chrysalis, and, nymph-like, shall ere long burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted for a higher society.

Henry David Thoreau
Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.

Henry David Thoreau
The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.

Henry David Thoreau
Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs.

Henry David Thoreau
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

Henry David Thoreau
Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg, by the side of which more will be laid.

Henry David Thoreau
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

Henry David Thoreau
The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral life of its devotee.

Henry David Thoreau
I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character — his immortal life; and so it becomes your cause wholly, and is not his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.

Henry David Thoreau
I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety.

Henry David Thoreau
It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. …We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them.

Henry David Thoreau
A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.

Henry David Thoreau
Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.

Henry David Thoreau
The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.

Henry David Thoreau
I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.

Henry David Thoreau
Why have we ever slandered the outward? The perception of surfaces will always have the effect of miracle to a sane sense.

Henry David Thoreau
Be resolutely and faithfully what you are; be humbly what you aspire to be.

Henry David Thoreau
Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds?

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship is never established as an understood relation. It is a miracle which requires constant proofs. It is an exercise of the purest imagination and of the rarest faith!....

Henry David Thoreau
God is alone,-but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion.

Henry David Thoreau
There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

Henry David Thoreau