Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?

Henry David Thoreau
There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man,--all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners!

Henry David Thoreau
There should always be some flowering and maturing of the fruits of nature in the cooking process.

Henry David Thoreau
In the love of narrow souls I make many short voyages but in vain-I find no sea room-but in great souls I sail before the wind without a watch, and never reach the shore.

Henry David Thoreau
The monster is never just there where we think he is. What is truly monstrous is our cowardice and sloth.

Henry David Thoreau
Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of.

Henry David Thoreau
How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and intellectual health!

Henry David Thoreau
In civilization, as in a southern latitude, man degenerates at length, and yields to the incursion of more northern tribes.

Henry David Thoreau
Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever.

Henry David Thoreau
Man's moral nature is a riddle which only eternity can solve.

Henry David Thoreau
Many old people receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long time ago.

Henry David Thoreau
Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much.

Henry David Thoreau
When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed anddrawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men,--those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.

Henry David Thoreau
I respect the skunk as a human being in a very humble sphere.

Henry David Thoreau
It is not every man who can be a Christian, even in a very moderate sense, whatever education you give him. It is a matter of constitution and temperament, after all. He may have to be born again many times. I have known many a man who pretended to be a Christian, in whom it was ridiculous, for he had no genius for it. It is not every man who can be a free man, even.

Henry David Thoreau
Though the words Canada East on the map stretch over many rivers and lakes and unexplored wildernesses, the actual Canada, which might be the colored portion of the map, is but a little clearing on the banks of the river, which one of those syllables would more than cover.

Henry David Thoreau
For one that comes with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand come with an axe or rifle. What a coarse and imperfect use Indiansand hunters make of nature! No wonder that their race is so soon exterminated.

Henry David Thoreau
For a man to act himself, he must be perfectly free; otherwise he is in danger of losing all sense of responsibility or of self- respect.

Henry David Thoreau
I was born upon thy bank, river, My blood flows in thy stream, And thou meanderest forever, At the bottom of my dream.

Henry David Thoreau
There is one thought for the field, another for the house. I would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted in the house.

Henry David Thoreau
A man's whole life is taxed for the least thing well done. It is its net result.

Henry David Thoreau
The first pleasant days of spring come out like a squirrel and go in again.

Henry David Thoreau
In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.

Henry David Thoreau
The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all things proclaim. It is seemingly instantaneous at last.

Henry David Thoreau
I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable; but my friend is my amiableness personified.

Henry David Thoreau
The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.

Henry David Thoreau
Books are for the most part willfully and hastily written, as parts of a system to supply a want real or imagined.

Henry David Thoreau
I don't like the city better, the more I see it, but worse. I am ashamed of my eyes that behold it. It is a thousand times meanerthan I could have imagined.... The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population.

Henry David Thoreau
The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There is no telling what it may not vomit up.

Henry David Thoreau
A man of rare common sense and directness of speech, as of action; a transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and principles,Mthat was what distinguished him.

Henry David Thoreau