Henry David Thoreau - Walden (1854)

198 Sourced Quotes

View all Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

Henry David Thoreau
Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.

Henry David Thoreau
Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice.

Henry David Thoreau
Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.

Henry David Thoreau
It is not worthwhile to go around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.

Henry David Thoreau
I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone.

Henry David Thoreau
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

Henry David Thoreau
The three-o'-clock in the morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest.

Henry David Thoreau
What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

Henry David Thoreau
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

Henry David Thoreau
I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

Henry David Thoreau
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

Henry David Thoreau
Our molting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives.

Henry David Thoreau
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.

Henry David Thoreau
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Their authors are a natural irresistible aristocracy in every society, and more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind.

Henry David Thoreau
In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident.

Henry David Thoreau
I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

Henry David Thoreau
The man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while.

Henry David Thoreau
As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and hide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.

Henry David Thoreau
Once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged my bean-field,--effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would say,--and devour him, partly for experiment's sake; but though it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the longest use would not make that a good practice, however it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed by the village butcher.

Henry David Thoreau
Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners?

Henry David Thoreau
There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers

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
I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse.

Henry David Thoreau
The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.

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
The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must bestripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living laid for a foundation.

Henry David Thoreau
I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not; but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.

Henry David Thoreau
The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what we do; and yet how much is not done by us!

Henry David Thoreau
It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.

Henry David Thoreau