Quotes by Henry David Thoreau
We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.
The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and un...
Youth gets together with their materials to build a bridge to the moon or maybe a palace on earth; then in middle age they decide to build a woodshed with them instead.
The boatmen appeared to lead an easy and contented life, and we thought that we should prefer their employment ourselves to many professions w...
The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. --
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than de...
As for the graces of expression, a great thought is never found in a mean dress; but ... the nine Muses and the three Graces will have conspir...
What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. Sports
Time is but the 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. I would drink deeper; fish fill the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.
And by another year, Such as God knows, with freer air, More fruits and fairer flowers Will bear, While I droop here.
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails.
Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house.
The ocean is but a larger lake. At midsummer you may sometimes see a strip of glassy smoothness on it, a few rods in width and many miles long...
In my cheapest moments I am apt to think that it is n't my business to be "seeking the spirit," but as much its business to be seeking me.
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 cau...
By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.
One who pressed forward incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himse...
Our whole life is startingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.
You come from attending the funeral of mankind to attend to a natural phenomenon. A little thought is sexton to all the world.
If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. 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. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.
I am astonished at the singular pertinacity and endurance of our lives. The miracle is, that what is is, when it is so difficult, if not impos...
This life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any account men give of it.
