Quotes by Henry David Thoreau
There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.
In the meanest are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly disposed.
God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.
A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.
An unclean person is universally a slothful one.
Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.
However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.
A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double; the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the forepart plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her until you tread on it.
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.
What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.
Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.
Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.
How earthy old people become - moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.
Beware of all enterprises that require a new set of clothes.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
