Henry David Thoreau Quotes

1,894 Sourced Quotes

As we passed under the last bridge over the canal, just before reaching the Merrimack, the people coming out of church paused to look at us from above, and apparently, so strong is custom, indulged in some heathenish comparisons; but we were the truest observers of this sunny day

Henry David Thoreau
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Henry David Thoreau
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Henry David Thoreau
The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.

Henry David Thoreau
It is so rare to meet with a man outdoors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands.

Henry David Thoreau
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

Henry David Thoreau
Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.

Henry David Thoreau
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Henry David Thoreau
The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.

Henry David Thoreau
To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common sense, it contains only enduring and essential truth, the I and you, the here and there, the now and then, being omitted. Either time or rare wisdom writes it. Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years. The poet is he who can write some pure mythology today without the aid of posterity

Henry David Thoreau
A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; — not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.

Henry David Thoreau
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

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

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

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
Sphere Music — Some sounds seem to reverberate along the plain, and then settle to earth again like dust; such are Noise, Discord, Jargon. But such only as spring heavenward, and I may catch from steeples and hilltops in their upward course, which are the more refined parts of the former, are the true sphere music — pure, unmixed music — in which no wail mingles.

Henry David Thoreau
You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; may be you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it.

Henry David Thoreau
It is very rare that you meet with obstacles in this world, which the humblest man has not faculties to surmount.

Henry David Thoreau
Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

Henry David Thoreau
Enemies publish themselves. They declare war. The friend never declares his love.

Henry David Thoreau
A man may esteem himself happy when that which is his food is also his medicine.

Henry David Thoreau
How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

Henry David Thoreau
To what end do I lead a simple life at all, pray? That I may teach others to simplify their lives? - and so all our lives be simplified merely, like an algebraic formula? Or not, rather, that I may make use of the ground I have cleared to live more worthily and profitably?

Henry David Thoreau
The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell.

Henry David Thoreau
It is an interesting question, how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

Henry David Thoreau
It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.

Henry David Thoreau
Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.

Henry David Thoreau
.. men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.

Henry David Thoreau