Quotes by Henry David Thoreau
A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.
The only fruit which even much living yields seems to be often only some trivial success,—the ability to do some slight thing better. We mak...
How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayer...
There have been heroes for whom this world seemed expressly prepared, as if creation had at last succeeded; whose daily life was the stuff of ...
I saw deep in the eyes of the animals the human soul look out upon me. I saw where it was born deep down under feathers and fur, or condemned for a while to roam four-footed among the brambles I caught the clinging mute glance of the prisoner and swore that I would be faithful.
Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.
The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor.
It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. Nature
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.
Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.
So near along life's stream are the fountains of innocence and youth making fertile its sandy margin; and the voyageur will do well to repleni...
He was a superior man. He did not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal things. He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted ...
The island seemed deserted to-day, yet I observed some new houses among the weather-stained ones, as if the tribe still had a design upon life...
Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render.
They should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning ...
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Life
I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. To be awake is to be alive. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. Every man is a builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Many go fishing without knowing it is fish they are after.
Ah! I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow ...
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, cattle, barns, and farming tools, for these are more easily acquired than gotten rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labour in.
It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.
Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is er...
