Henry David Thoreau Quotes

1,894 Sourced Quotes

I know of no redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved I fall back on to this ground.

Henry David Thoreau
I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.

Henry David Thoreau
There are theoretical reformers at all times, and all the world over, living on anticipation.

Henry David Thoreau
The man of genius knows what he is aiming at; nobody else knows. And he alone knows when something comes between him and his object. In the course of generations, however, men will excuse you for not doing as they do, if you will bring enough to pass in your own way.

Henry David Thoreau
So soon did we, wayfarers, begin to learn that man's life is rounded with the same few facts, the same simple relations everywhere, and it is vain to travel to find it new.

Henry David Thoreau
I think that Nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace.

Henry David Thoreau
He who rides and keeps the beaten track studies the fences chiefly.

Henry David Thoreau
There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography.

Henry David Thoreau
What do the botanists know? Our lives should go between the lichen and the bark. The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind. We are still being born, and have as yet but a dim vision of sea and land, sun, moon, and stars, and shall not see clearly till after nine days at least.

Henry David Thoreau
Do what you know you ought to do. Why should we ever go abroad, even across the way, to ask a neighbor's advice? There is a nearerneighbor within us incessantly telling us how we should behave. But we wait for the neighbor without to tell us of some false, easier way.

Henry David Thoreau
How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down?

Henry David Thoreau
Woe be to the generation that lets any higher faculty in its midst go unemployed.

Henry David Thoreau
It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so.

Henry David Thoreau
I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not; but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.

Henry David Thoreau
When I would go a-visiting, I find that I go off the fashionable street,--not being inclined to change my dress,--to where man meets man, and not polished shoe meets shoe.

Henry David Thoreau
No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

Henry David Thoreau
I noticed, as I had done before, that there was a lull among the mosquitoes about midnight, and that they began again in the morning. Nature is thus merciful. But apparently they need rest as well as we.

Henry David Thoreau
How far men go for the material of their houses! The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in all ages, send into far, primitive forests, beyond the bounds of their civilization, where the moose and bear and savage dwell, for their pine boards for ordinary use. And, on the other hand, the savage soon receives from cities iron arrow-points, hatchets, and guns, to point his savageness with.

Henry David Thoreau
He who eats the fruit should at least plant the seed; ay, if possible, a better seed than that whose fruit he has enjoyed.

Henry David Thoreau
How often, when we have been nearest each other bodily, have we really been farthest off! Our tongues were the witty foils with which we fenced each other off.

Henry David Thoreau
Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?

Henry David Thoreau
What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties!

Henry David Thoreau
That is a pathetic inquiry among travelers and geographers after the site of ancient Troy. It is not near where they think it is.When a thing is decayed and gone, how indistinct must be the place it occupied!

Henry David Thoreau
Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them.

Henry David Thoreau
Cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off.

Henry David Thoreau
Biography, too, is liable to the same objection; it should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our bowels that we may be somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be?

Henry David Thoreau
It is not when I am going to meet him, but when I am just turning away and leaving him alone, that I discover what God is. I say, God. I am not sure that that is the name. You will know what I mean.

Henry David Thoreau
Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there?

Henry David Thoreau
I am not afraid of praise, for I have practiced it on myself.

Henry David Thoreau
Some interests have got a footing on the earth which we have not made sufficient allowance for.

Henry David Thoreau