Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.

Henry David Thoreau
I have seen more men than usual, lately; and, well as I was acquainted with one, I am surprised to find what vulgar fellows they are.

Henry David Thoreau
I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once moreonly the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,--those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.

Henry David Thoreau
There are various tough problems yet to solve, and we must shift to live, betwixt spirit and matter, such a human life as we can.

Henry David Thoreau
I think it would be worth the while to introduce a school of children to such [an oak grove], that they may get an idea of the primitive oaks before they are all gone, instead of hiring botanists to lecture to them when it is too late.

Henry David Thoreau
What an admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life! Indeed, the unchallenged bravery which these studies imply, is far more impressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior.

Henry David Thoreau
I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents.

Henry David Thoreau
It is said that a rogue does not look you in the face, neither does an honest man look at you as if he had his reputation to establish.

Henry David Thoreau
I am resolved that I will not through humility become the devil's attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word for the truth.

Henry David Thoreau
I do not believe there are eight hundred human beings on the globe.

Henry David Thoreau
The pickerel... the swiftest, wariest, and most ravenous of fishes.

Henry David Thoreau
There is an orientalism in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but the farthest east.

Henry David Thoreau
It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump.

Henry David Thoreau
I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung.

Henry David Thoreau
There is on the earth no institution which Friendship has established; it is not taught by any religion; no scripture contains itsmaxims. It has no temple, nor even a solitary column. There goes a rumor that the earth is inhabited, but the shipwrecked mariner has not seen a footprint on the shore. The hunter has found only fragments of pottery and the monuments of inhabitants.

Henry David Thoreau
If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui.

Henry David Thoreau
A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.

Henry David Thoreau
The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur.

Henry David Thoreau
In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake.

Henry David Thoreau
You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you.

Henry David Thoreau
The inhabitants of Canada appeared to be suffering between two fires,--the soldiery and the priesthood.

Henry David Thoreau
Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

Henry David Thoreau
Two or three hours' walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A single farmhouse which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the dominions of the King of Dahomey.

Henry David Thoreau
A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man,--a denizen of the woods. "The pale white man!" I do not wonder that the African pitied him.

Henry David Thoreau
In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.

Henry David Thoreau
A township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forest rots below,--such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts and wild honey.

Henry David Thoreau
There must be the... generating force of Love behind every effort destined to be successful.

Henry David Thoreau
He who receives an injury is to some extent an accomplice of the wrong-doer.

Henry David Thoreau
Of all the men who were said to be my contemporaries, it seemed to me that John Brown was the only one who had not died.

Henry David Thoreau
Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, which in others are luxuries merely and in others still are entirely unknown.

Henry David Thoreau