Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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The newspapers are the ruling power. Any other government is reduced to a few marines at Fort Independence. If a man neglects to read the Daily Times, government will go down on its knees to him, for this is the only treason these days.

Henry David Thoreau
It is the characteristic of great poems that they will yield of their sense in due proportion to the hasty and the deliberate reader. To the practical they will be common sense, and to the wise wisdom; as either the traveler may wet his lips, or an army may fill its water-casks at a full stream.

Henry David Thoreau
It is but too easy to establish another durable and harmonious routine. Immediately all parts of nature consent to it. Only make something to take the place of something, and men will behave as if it was the very thing they wanted.

Henry David Thoreau
The divinity in man is the true vestal fire of the temple which is never permitted to go out, but burns as steadily and with as pure a flame on the obscure provincial altar as in Numa's temple at Rome.

Henry David Thoreau
For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it (life), whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'

Henry David Thoreau
And by another year,
Such as God knows, with freer air,
More fruits and fairer flowers
Will bear,
While I droop here.

Henry David Thoreau
The stars are distant and unobtrusive, but bright and enduring as our fairest and most memorable experiences.

Henry David Thoreau
A temple, you know, was anciently "an open place without a roof," whose walls served merely to shut out the world and direct the mind toward heaven; but a modern meeting-house shuts out the heavens, while it crowds the world into still closer quarters.

Henry David Thoreau
Wealth cannot purchase any great private solace or convenience. Riches are only the means of sociality.

Henry David Thoreau
Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle, it is as if it were redeemed. When the desire to be better than we are is really sincere we are instantly elevated, and so far better already.

Henry David Thoreau
We inspire friendship in men when we have contracted friendship with the gods.

Henry David Thoreau
Events, circumstances, etc., have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown.

Henry David Thoreau
The schools begin with what they call the elements, and where do they end?

Henry David Thoreau
When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis.

Henry David Thoreau
There is a certain perfection in accident which we never consciously attain.

Henry David Thoreau
All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it.

Henry David Thoreau
I make my own time. I make my own terms. I cannot see how God or Nature can ever get the start of me.

Henry David Thoreau
While the Governor, and the Mayor, and countless officers of the Commonwealth are at large, the champions of liberty are imprisoned.

Henry David Thoreau
This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.

Henry David Thoreau
In respect to religion and the healing art, all nations are still in a state of barbarism. In the most civilized countries the priest is still but a Powwow, and the physician a Great Medicine.

Henry David Thoreau
The present is always younger than antiquity.

Henry David Thoreau
Faint heart never won true friend. O my friend, may it come to pass, once, that when you are my friend I may be yours.

Henry David Thoreau
The stars are the jewels of the night, and perchance surpass anything which day has to show. A companion with whom I was sailing one very windy but bright moonlight night, when the stars were few and faint, thought that a man could get along with them,-though he was considerably reduced in his circumstances,-that they were a kind of bread and cheese that never failed.

Henry David Thoreau
The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.

Henry David Thoreau
When I look at the stars, nothing which the astronomers have said attaches to them, they are so simple and remote.

Henry David Thoreau
Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire.

Henry David Thoreau
We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

Henry David Thoreau
Among the signs of autumn I perceive The Roman wormwood (called by learned men Ambrosia elatior, food for gods, — For to impartial science the humblest weed Is as immortal once as the proudest flower — ) Sprinkles its yellow dust over my shoes.

Henry David Thoreau
The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secrets of things.

Henry David Thoreau
Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.

Henry David Thoreau