Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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What great interval is there between him who is caught in Africa and made a plantation slave of in the South, and him who is caught in New England and made a Unitarian minister of?

Henry David Thoreau
Of what use the friendliest disposition even, if there are no hours given to Friendship, if it is forever postponed to unimportant duties and relations? Friendship first, Friendship last.

Henry David Thoreau
In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn.

Henry David Thoreau
To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions.

Henry David Thoreau
As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism never fails.

Henry David Thoreau
White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.... They are too pure to have a market value;they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they! We never learned meanness of them.

Henry David Thoreau
Trees are but rivers of sap and woody fibre flowing from the atmosphere and emptying in to the earth by their trunks - as their roots flow upward to the surface.

Henry David Thoreau
It is impossible to say all that we think, even to our truest Friend. We may bid him farewell forever sooner than complain, for our complaint is too well grounded to be uttered.

Henry David Thoreau
I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour of four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for.

Henry David Thoreau
It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.

Henry David Thoreau
The poet will maintain serenity in spite of all disappointments. He is expected to preserve an unconcerned and healthy outlook over the world, while he lives.

Henry David Thoreau
I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with thosewhich are insignificant, which only a divine mind could illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation.

Henry David Thoreau
If men were to be destroyed and the books they have written were to be transmitted to a new race of creatures, in a new world, what kind of record would be found in them of so remarkable a phenomenon as the rainbow?

Henry David Thoreau
The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely.

Henry David Thoreau
How sweet it would be to treat men and things, for an hour, for just what they are!

Henry David Thoreau
Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom everywhere.

Henry David Thoreau
I expect a time when, or rather an integrity by which, a man will get his coat as honestly and as perfectly fitting as a tree itsbark. Now our garments are typical of our conformity to the ways of the world, i.e., of the devil, and to some extent react on us and poison us, like that shirt which Hercules put on.

Henry David Thoreau
We could not help being struck by the seeming, though innocent, indifference of Nature to these men's necessities, while elsewhereshe was equally serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to pilgrim's shifts, and soon comes to staff and scrip and scallop-shell.

Henry David Thoreau
Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towardsrecognizing and organizing the rights of man?

Henry David Thoreau
Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster, both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very late, he honestly slumbered a fool's allowance.

Henry David Thoreau
A sufficiently great and generous trust could never be abused.

Henry David Thoreau
I suppose that the great questions of "Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge Absolute," which used to be discussed at Concord, are still unsettled.

Henry David Thoreau
What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado is anywhere but where he lives.

Henry David Thoreau
I love man-kind, but I hate the institutions of the dead unkind. Men execute nothing so faithfully as the wills of the dead, to the last codicil and letter. They rule this world, and the living are but their executors. Such foundation too have our lectures and our sermons, commonly.

Henry David Thoreau
Those undeserved joys which come uncalled and make us more pleased than grateful are they that sing.

Henry David Thoreau
The humblest observer who goes to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of the character of a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same thing with the wages of honest toil. But, practically, he forgets what he has seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle, and goes into trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly proves another lottery, where the fact is not so obvious.

Henry David Thoreau
Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant andfluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and independence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any.

Henry David Thoreau
I think of no news to tell you. It is a serene summer day here, all above the snow. The hens steal their nests, and I steal theireggs still, as formerly. This is what I do with the hands. Ah, labor,--it is a divine institution, and conversation with many men and hens.

Henry David Thoreau
The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state....The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.

Henry David Thoreau
Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another.

Henry David Thoreau