Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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Those whom we can love, we can hate; to others we are indifferent.

Henry David Thoreau
Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing.

Henry David Thoreau
The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but last fruits also.

Henry David Thoreau
Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.

Henry David Thoreau
One is wise to cultivate the tree that bears fruit in our soul.

Henry David Thoreau
Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.

Henry David Thoreau
The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.

Henry David Thoreau
If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

Henry David Thoreau
We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.

Henry David Thoreau
Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.

Henry David Thoreau
I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.

Henry David Thoreau
All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

Henry David Thoreau
I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak.

Henry David Thoreau
Gradually the village murmur subsided, and we seemed to be embarked on the placid current of our dreams, floating from past to future as silently as one awakes to fresh morning or evening thoughts.

Henry David Thoreau
I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone.

Henry David Thoreau
The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.

Henry David Thoreau
If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.

Henry David Thoreau
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

Henry David Thoreau
Death is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident. It is as common as life.

Henry David Thoreau
Poetry is the only life got, the only work done, the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when he has put all the world under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes.

Henry David Thoreau
It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindus, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison might help to liberalize the faith of men. This is a work which Time will surely edit, reserved to crown the labors of the printing-press. This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth.

Henry David Thoreau
The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other's hopes. They are kind to each other's dreams.

Henry David Thoreau
The three-o'-clock in the morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest.

Henry David Thoreau
Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted.

Henry David Thoreau
Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

Henry David Thoreau