Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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Rivers must have been the guides which conducted the footsteps of the first travelers. They are the constant lure, when they flow by our doors, to distant enterprise and adventure, and, by a natural impulse, the dwellers on their banks will at length accompany their currents to the lowlands of the globe, or explore at their invitation the interior of continents.

Henry David Thoreau
Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of.

Henry David Thoreau
One revelation has been made to the Indian, another to the white man.

Henry David Thoreau
Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him.

Henry David Thoreau
I think it will be found that he who speaks with most authority on a given subject is not ignorant of what has been said by his predecessors. He will take his place in a regular order, and substantially add his own knowledge to the knowledge of previous generations.

Henry David Thoreau
I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.

Henry David Thoreau
What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.

Henry David Thoreau
Christianity only hopes. It has hung its harp on the willows, and cannot sing a song in a strange land. It has dreamed a sad dream, and does not yet welcome the morning with joy. The mother tells her falsehoods to her child, but, thank heaven, the child does not grow up in its parent's shadow. Our mother's faith has not grown with her experience. Her experience has been too much for her. The lesson of life was too hard for her to learn.

Henry David Thoreau
There have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the only traces which they have left. They are the heathen.

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
We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.

Henry David Thoreau
Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction.

Henry David Thoreau
I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least - and it is commonly more than that - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.

Henry David Thoreau
I have tasted but little bread in my life. It has been mere grub and provender for the most part. Of bread that nourished the brain and the heart, scarcely any. There is absolutely none on the tables even of the rich.

Henry David Thoreau
There are as many strata at different levels of life as there are leaves in a book. When on the higher levels we can remember the lower levels, but when on the lower we cannot remember the higher.

Henry David Thoreau
I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society. Most with whom you endeavor to talk soon come to a stand against some institution in which they appear to hold stock, — that is, some particular, not universal, way of viewing things.

Henry David Thoreau
I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor.

Henry David Thoreau
So we defend ourselves and our henroosts, and maintain slavery.

Henry David Thoreau
Some old poet's grand imagination is imposed on us as adamantine everlasting truth, and God's own word! Pythagoras says, truly enough, "A true assertion respecting God, is an assertion of God"; but we may well doubt if there is any example of this in literature.

Henry David Thoreau
Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts - a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments.

Henry David Thoreau