Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers.

Henry David Thoreau
It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downward to the sea.

Henry David Thoreau
The moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third potato, and making a snug bed even there of some hair left after plastering and of brown paper; for even the wildest animals love comfort and warmth as well as man, and they survive the winter only because they are so careful to secure them.

Henry David Thoreau
No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all.

Henry David Thoreau
The question is whether you can bear freedom. At present the vast majority of men, whether white or black, require the discipline of labor which enslaves them for their own good.

Henry David Thoreau
Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer's character, until we hesitate tolay them aside without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies.

Henry David Thoreau
The inhabitants of earth behold commonly but the dark and shadowy under side of heaven's pavement; it is only when seen at a favorable angle in the horizon, morning or evening, that some faint streaks of the rich lining of the clouds are revealed.

Henry David Thoreau
There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon.

Henry David Thoreau
I have not read far in the statutes of this Commonwealth. It is not profitable reading. They do not always say what is true; and they do not always mean what they say.

Henry David Thoreau
To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery.

Henry David Thoreau
I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves.

Henry David Thoreau
A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earnedin the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours.

Henry David Thoreau
We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.

Henry David Thoreau
In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil,--not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements, and modes of culture only!

Henry David Thoreau
Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns.

Henry David Thoreau
The botanist should make interest with the bees if he would know when the flowers open and when they close.

Henry David Thoreau
Men talk of freedom! How many are free to think? Free from fear, from perturbation, from prejudice? Nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand are perfect slaves.

Henry David Thoreau
In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not know it.

Henry David Thoreau
History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning ofthings, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,--when did burdock and plantain sprout first?

Henry David Thoreau
It is a very true and expressive phrase, "He looked daggers at me," for the first pattern and prototype of all daggers must have been a glance of the eye.... It is wonderful how we get about the streets without being wounded by these delicate and glancing weapons, a man can so nimbly whip out his rapier, or without being noticed carry it unsheathed. Yet it is rare that one gets seriously looked at.

Henry David Thoreau
What exercise is to the body, employment is to the mind and morals.

Henry David Thoreau
I do not remember anything which Confucius has said directly respecting man's "origin, purpose, and destiny." He was more practical than that. He is full of wisdom applied to human relations,--to the private life,--the family,--government, etc. It is remarkable that, according to his own account, the sum and substance of his teaching is, as you know, to do as you would be done by.

Henry David Thoreau
Love is no individual's experience; and though we are imperfect mediums, it does not partake of our imperfection; though we are finite, it is infinite and eternal...

Henry David Thoreau
Are not all finite beings better pleased with motions relative than absolute?

Henry David Thoreau
When the chopper would praise a pine, he will commonly tell you that the one he cut was so big that a yoke of oxen stood on its stump; as if that were what the pine had grown for, to become the footstool of oxen.

Henry David Thoreau
At present the globe goes with a shattered constitution in its orbit.... No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise; as the laws of man's own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to health and happiness.

Henry David Thoreau
If a man were to place himself in an attitude to bear manfully the greatest evil that can be inflicted on him, he would find suddenly that there was no such evil to bear; his brave back would go a-begging.

Henry David Thoreau
If you look over a list of medicinal recipes in vogue in the last century, how foolish and useless they are seen to be! And yet we use equally absurd ones with faith today.

Henry David Thoreau
If a person lost would conclude that after all he is not lost, he is not beside himself, but standing in his own old shoes on thevery spot where he is, and that for the time being he will live there; but the places that have known him, they are lost,--how much anxiety and danger would vanish.

Henry David Thoreau
Much of our poetry has the very best manners, but no character.

Henry David Thoreau