Quotes by Henry David Thoreau
We feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any pure grief is ample recompense for all. That is, if we are faithful; -- for a spent grief is but sympathy with the soul that disposes events, and is as natural as the resin of Arabian trees. -- Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.
A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him
Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.
If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel i...
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
The merely political aspect of the land is never very cheering; men are degraded when considered as the members of a political organization.
I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous ... as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, ther...
Nature herself has not provided the most graceful end for her creatures. What becomes of all these birds that people the air and forest for ou...
Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.
Some men are judges, these August days, sitting on benches, even till the court rises; they sit judging there honorably, between the seasons a...
Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature—if the prospect of a...
Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.
Why care for these dead bodies? They really have no friends but the worms or fishes. Their owners were coming to the New World, as Columbus an...
The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as what are called the "means" are increased.
Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.
We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. We do not care for the Bible, but we do care for the newspaper. At any meet...
All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy we reason from our hands to our head.
Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature --if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you --know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not bad... it looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults, even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may have perhaps so
Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic.
As for the sacred Scriptures, or Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me even their titles? Most men do not know that any nation but t...
These men, in teaching us how to die, have at the same time taught us how to live. If this man's acts and words do not create a revival, it wi...
The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.
