Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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I do not believe in lawyers, in that mode of attacking or defending a man, because you descend to meet the judge on his own ground, and, in cases of the highest importance, it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a human law or not. Let lawyers decide trivial cases.

Henry David Thoreau
I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me.

Henry David Thoreau
After all, I believe it is the style of thought entirely, and the style of expression, which makes the difference in books.

Henry David Thoreau
Truly the stars were given for a consolation to man.

Henry David Thoreau
My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours' walking will carry me to as strange a country as I ever expect to see.

Henry David Thoreau
Plainly the fox belongs to a different order of things from that which reigns in the village. Our courts, though they offer a bounty for his hide, and our pulpits, though they draw many a moral from his cunning, are in few senses contemporary with his free forest life.

Henry David Thoreau
If we dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak truth.

Henry David Thoreau
Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in the most Oriental city, is seen the fresh and primitive and savage nature, in which Scythians and Ethiopians and Indians dwell. What is echo, what are light and shade, day and night, ocean and stars, earthquake and eclipse, there? The works of man are everywhere swallowed up in the immensity of nature. The AEgean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the Indian.

Henry David Thoreau
It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard.

Henry David Thoreau
The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunneled under the whole breadth of the land.

Henry David Thoreau
Can there be any greater reproach than an idle learning? Learn to split wood, at least.

Henry David Thoreau
Unpremeditated music is the true gauge which measures the current of our thoughts; the very undertow of our life's stream.

Henry David Thoreau
The whole body of what is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature are the purest morality.

Henry David Thoreau
If you indulge in long periods, you must be sure to have a snapper at the end.

Henry David Thoreau
Today you may write a chapter on the advantages of traveling, and tomorrow you may write another chapter on the advantages of not traveling.

Henry David Thoreau
When we come down into the distant village, visible from the mountain-top, the nobler inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed, and left only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination of poets which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of their heroes.

Henry David Thoreau
If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends!

Henry David Thoreau
There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill.

Henry David Thoreau
We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves, that there may be grounds enough for friendship.

Henry David Thoreau
Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.

Henry David Thoreau
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point.

Henry David Thoreau
Take Time by the forelock. It is also the safest part to take a serpent by.

Henry David Thoreau
Not secondary to the sun, she gives us his blaze again, Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day... In Heaven queen she is among the spheres; She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure.

Henry David Thoreau
The true finish is the work of time, and the use to which a thing is put. The elements are still polishing the pyramids.

Henry David Thoreau
I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which these things would be by me unavoidable.

Henry David Thoreau
Any man knows when he is justified, and all the wits in the world cannot enlighten him on that point. The murderer always knows that he is justly punished; but when a government takes the life of a man without the consent of his conscience, it is an audacious government, and is taking a step towards its own dissolution.

Henry David Thoreau
You may tell by looking at any twig of the forest, ay, at your very wood-pile, whether its winter is past or not.

Henry David Thoreau
The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks where the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets.

Henry David Thoreau
Our own country furnishes antiquities as ancient and durable, and as useful, as any; rocks at least as well covered with lichens,and a soil which, if it is virgin, is but virgin mould, the very dust of nature. What if we cannot read Rome or Greece, Etruria or Carthage, or Egypt or Babylon, on these; are our cliffs bare?

Henry David Thoreau
We seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of sheep-pasturage before it is habitable by man.

Henry David Thoreau