Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life.

Henry David Thoreau
Rain ! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains, as no artist could ever do !

Henry David Thoreau
The necessity of labor and conversation with many men and things to the scholar is rarely well remembered.

Henry David Thoreau
All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are the physically dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no longer such if it be stagnant. A man's life should be constantly as fresh as this river. It should be the same channel, but a new water every instant.

Henry David Thoreau
By what a delicate and far-stretched contribution every island is made! What an enterprise of nature thus to lay the foundations of and to build up the future continent, of golden and silver sands and the ruins of forests, with ant-like industry.

Henry David Thoreau
Lichens which are so thin are described in the dry state, as they are most commonly, not most truly seen. They are, indeed, dryly described.

Henry David Thoreau
The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled "a contemplative man's recreation," introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist's observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

Henry David Thoreau
We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,--and then we can hardly see anything else.

Henry David Thoreau
Continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the afterlife of those who have traveled much is very pathetic.

Henry David Thoreau
The Indian's intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each.

Henry David Thoreau
Every sacred book, successively, has been accepted in the faith that it was to be the final resting-place of the sojourning soul;but after all, it was but a caravansary which supplied refreshment to the traveler, and directed him farther on his way to Isphahan or Bagdat. Thank God, no Hindoo tyranny prevailed at the framing of the world, but we are freemen of the universe, and not sentenced to any caste.

Henry David Thoreau
The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship is the unspeakable joy and blessing that result to two or more individuals who from constitution sympathize. Such natures are liable to no mistakes, but will know each other through thick and thin. Between two by nature alike and fitted to sympathize, there is no veil, and there can be no obstacle. Who are the estranged? Two friends explaining.

Henry David Thoreau
It will be seen that we contemplate a time when man's will shall be law to the physical world, and he shall no longer be deterredby such abstractions as time and space, height and depth, weight and hardness, but shall indeed be the lord of creation.

Henry David Thoreau
Routine is a ground to stand on, a wall to retreat to; we cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against it.

Henry David Thoreau
We could not help contrasting the equanimity of Nature with the bustle and impatience of man. His words and actions presume alwaysa crisis near at hand, but she is forever silent and unpretending.

Henry David Thoreau
All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity.

Henry David Thoreau
Exaggerated history is poetry, and truth referred to a new standard.

Henry David Thoreau
I never yet knew the sun to be knocked down and rolled through a mud-puddle; he comes out honor-bright from behind every storm. Let us then take sides with the sun, seeing we have so much leisure.

Henry David Thoreau
In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd.

Henry David Thoreau
But the impressions which the morning makes vanish with its dews, and not even the most "persevering mortal" can preserve the memory of its freshness to midday.

Henry David Thoreau
Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most sensitive.

Henry David Thoreau
The foul slime stands for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity; the fragrant flower that springs from it, for the purity and courage which are immortal.

Henry David Thoreau
Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.

Henry David Thoreau
I have climbed several higher mountains without guide or path, and have found, as might be expected, that it takes only more time and patience commonly than to travel the smoothest highway.

Henry David Thoreau
If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon the walls of the temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the shields taken from the enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended there. We have not far to seek for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust takes shape and confirms some story which we had read.

Henry David Thoreau
I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking water only.

Henry David Thoreau
The book has never been written which is to be accepted without any allowance.

Henry David Thoreau
It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time.

Henry David Thoreau
Doubtless, we are as slow to conceive of Paradise as of Heaven, of a perfect natural as of a perfect spiritual world. We see how past ages have loitered and erred. "Is perhaps our generation free from irrationality and error? Have we perhaps reached now the summit of human wisdom, and need no more to look out for mental or physical improvement?" Undoubtedly, we are never so visionary as to be prepared for what the next hour may bring forth.

Henry David Thoreau