Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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This life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any account men give of it.

Henry David Thoreau
What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes by them.

Henry David Thoreau
In Adam's fall We sinned all. In the new Adam's rise, We shall all reach the skies.

Henry David Thoreau
Ex oriente lux may still be the motto of scholars, for the Western world has not yet derived from the East all the light which itis destined to receive thence.

Henry David Thoreau
The mass of men are very easily imposed on. They have their runways in which they always travel, and are sure to fall into any pit or box-trap set therein.

Henry David Thoreau
If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.

Henry David Thoreau
Nothing is cheap and course, neither dew-drops nor snow-flakes.

Henry David Thoreau
To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.

Henry David Thoreau
If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality.

Henry David Thoreau
There is considerable danger that a man will be crazy between dinner and supper; but it will not directly answer any good purposethat I know of, and it is just as easy to be sane.

Henry David Thoreau
I did not go to Boston, for with regard to that place I sympathize with one of my neighbors, an old man, who has not been there since the last war, when he was compelled to go. No, I have a real genius for staying at home.

Henry David Thoreau
We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,--at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives onthe sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.

Henry David Thoreau
A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land.

Henry David Thoreau
Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.

Henry David Thoreau
The present hour is always wealthiest when it is poorer than the future ones, as that is the pleasantest site which affords the pleasantest prospect.

Henry David Thoreau
We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me.

Henry David Thoreau
A man of fine perceptions is more truly feminine than a merely sentimental woman.

Henry David Thoreau
Verily, chemistry is not a splitting of hairs when you have got half a dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory.

Henry David Thoreau
Man's eye is the true star-finder, the comet-seeker. No superior telescope to this has been invented.

Henry David Thoreau
Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself.

Henry David Thoreau
A man's real faith is never contained in his creed, nor is his creed an article of his faith. The last is never adopted. This it is that permits him to smile ever, and to live even as bravely as he does. And yet he clings anxiously to his creed, as to a straw, thinking that that does him good service because his sheet anchor does not drag.

Henry David Thoreau
I am not afraid that I shall exaggerate the value and significance of life, but that I shall not be up to the occasion which it is.

Henry David Thoreau
Such is the never-failing beauty and accuracy of language, the most perfect art in the world; the chisel of a thousand years retouches it.

Henry David Thoreau
To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence.

Henry David Thoreau
Each reaching and aspiration is an instinct with which all nature consists and cöoperates, and therefore it is not in vain. But alas! each relaxing and desperation is an instinct too. To be active, well, happy, implies courage. To be ready to fight in a duel or a battle implies desperation, or that you hold your life cheap.

Henry David Thoreau
As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as theevening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.

Henry David Thoreau
We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure.

Henry David Thoreau
Behold the difference between the Oriental and the Occidental. The former has nothing to do in this world; the latter is full of activity. The one looks in the sun until his eyes are put out; the other follows him prone in his westward course.

Henry David Thoreau
The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable; of a bad one, to make it less valuable.

Henry David Thoreau
This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest posterity, content with slightly and religiously retouchingthe old material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity.

Henry David Thoreau