Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character — his immortal life; and so it becomes your cause wholly, and is not his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.

Henry David Thoreau
The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral life of its devotee.

Henry David Thoreau
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

Henry David Thoreau
Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg, by the side of which more will be laid.

Henry David Thoreau
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

Henry David Thoreau
Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs.

Henry David Thoreau
The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.

Henry David Thoreau
Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.

Henry David Thoreau
You think that I am impoverishing myself withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web or chrysalis, and, nymph-like, shall ere long burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted for a higher society.

Henry David Thoreau
I do not wish to force my thoughts upon you, but I feel forced myself. Little as I know of Captain Brown, I would fain do my part to correct the tone and the statements of the newspapers, and of my countrymen generally, respecting his character and actions. It costs us nothing to be just. We can at least express our sympathy with, and admiration of, him and his companions, and that is what I now propose to do.

Henry David Thoreau
The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.

Henry David Thoreau
The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something.

Henry David Thoreau
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

Henry David Thoreau
We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.

Henry David Thoreau
It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

Henry David Thoreau
She with one breath attunes the spheres,
And also my poor human heart.

Henry David Thoreau
If i repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. what demon possessed me that i behaved so well?

Henry David Thoreau
No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know.

Henry David Thoreau
Each new year is a surprise to us. We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird, and when we hear it again, it is remembered like a dream, reminding us of a previous state of existence. How happens it that the associations it awakens are always pleasing, never saddening, reminiscences of our sanest hours. The voice of nature is always encouraging.

Henry David Thoreau
The poet will write for his peers alone. He will remember only that he saw truth and beauty from his position, and expect the time when a vision as broad shall overlook the same field as freely.

Henry David Thoreau
The eye which can appreciate the naked and absolute beauty of a scientific truth is far more rare than that which is attracted by a moral one.

Henry David Thoreau
Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted or enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.

Henry David Thoreau
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

Henry David Thoreau
Let me suggest a theme for you: to state to yourself precisely and completely what that walk over the mountains amounted to for you, — returning to this essay again and again, until you are satisfied that all that was important in your experience is in it. Give this good reason to yourself for having gone over the mountains, for mankind is ever going over a mountain. Don't suppose that you can tell it precisely the first dozen times you try, but at 'em again, especially when, after a sufficient pause, you suspect that you are touching the heart or summit of the matter, reiterate your blows there, and account for the mountain to yourself. Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

Henry David Thoreau
I am struck by the simplicity of light in the atmosphere in the autumn, as if the earth absorbed none, and out of this profusion of dazzling light came the autumnal tints.

Henry David Thoreau
We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

Henry David Thoreau
There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.

Henry David Thoreau
This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge... It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature.

Henry David Thoreau
By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.

Henry David Thoreau
As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.

Henry David Thoreau