Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments?

Henry David Thoreau
In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial.

Henry David Thoreau
Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.

Henry David Thoreau
We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke strops our vice.

Henry David Thoreau
I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

Henry David Thoreau
Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it.

Henry David Thoreau
Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.

Henry David Thoreau
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

Henry David Thoreau
Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower into a truth.

Henry David Thoreau
When I had mapped the pond... I laid a rule on the map lengthwise, and then breadthwise, and found, to my surprise, that the line of greatest length intersected the line of greatest breadth exactly at the point of greatest depth.

Henry David Thoreau
May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!

Henry David Thoreau
True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.

Henry David Thoreau
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

Henry David Thoreau
So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.

Henry David Thoreau
I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.

Henry David Thoreau
The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls — the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.

Henry David Thoreau
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.

Henry David Thoreau
Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.

Henry David Thoreau
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

Henry David Thoreau
We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

Henry David Thoreau
I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came? — till you and I came over to him? The very fact that he had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him would alone distinguish him from ordinary heroes. His company was small indeed, because few could be found worthy to pass muster. Each one who there laid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man, culled out of many thousands, if not millions; apparently a man of principle, of rare courage, and devoted humanity; ready to sacrifice his life at any moment for the benefit of his fellow-man.

Henry David Thoreau
As for conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I don't think much of that.

Henry David Thoreau
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.

Henry David Thoreau
And the cost of a thing, it will be remembered, is the amount of life it requires to be exchanged for it.

Henry David Thoreau
Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.

Henry David Thoreau