Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement; but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight.

A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man,--a denizen of the woods. "The pale white man!" I do not wonder that the African pitied him.

Genius is not a retainer to any emperor.

The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale. Every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water isbeing warmed more rapidly than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly until the morning. The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature.

Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.

The truth is, there is money buried everywhere, and you have only to go to work to find it.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that Nature with which I am acquainted.

I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.

The stars are distant and unobtrusive, but bright and enduring as our fairest and most memorable experiences.

It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience, but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.

The Great Snow! How cheerful it is to hear of!

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.

Then at night the general stillness is more impressive than any sound, but occasionally you hear the note of an owl farther or nearer in the woods, and if near a lake, the semihuman cry of the loons at their unearthly revels.

Everyone must believe in something. I believe I'll go canoeing.

...how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!

Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs.

All things in this world must be seen with youthful, hopeful eyes.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.

There are various tough problems yet to solve, and we must shift to live, betwixt spirit and matter, such a human life as we can.

The true reformer does not want time, nor money, nor coöperation, nor advice. What is time but the stuff delay is made of? And depend upon it, our virtue will not live on the interest of our money. He expects no income, but outgoes; so soon as we begin to count the cost, the cost begins. And as for advice, the information floating in the atmosphere of society is as evanescent and unserviceable to him as gossamer for clubs of Hercules.

Trees indeed have hearts.

It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

What is most striking in the Maine wilderness is the continuousness of the forest, with fewer open intervals or glades than you had imagined. Except the few burnt lands, the narrow intervals on the rivers, the bare tops of the high mountains, and the lakes and streams, the forest is uninterrupted.

However, our fates at least are social. Our courses do not diverge; but as the web of destiny is woven it is fulled, and we are cast more and more into the centre. Men naturally, though feebly, seek this alliance, and their actions faintly foretell it.

Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead but a living stream, though it has less life within its waters and on its banks. It has a swift current, and, in this part of its course, a clayey bottom, almost no weeds, and comparatively few fishes.

Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen.

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

Alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe.

Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection.

You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint "No Admittance" on my gate.

The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable; of a bad one, to make it less valuable.

Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had no juice in them more than the singers.

Wherever a man separates from the multitude, and goes his own way in this mood, there indeed is a fork in the road, though ordinary travelers may see only a gap in the paling. His solitary path across lots will turn out the higher way of the two.

The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest.

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 replenish his vessels often at these uncontaminated sources.

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of head or hands. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in reverie, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.

When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in. I love to wander and muse over them in their graves. Here are no lying nor vain epitaphs.

Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound. By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty. There seem to be two sides of this world, presented us at different times, as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or death. And seen with the eye of the poet, as God sees them, all things are alive and beautiful.

The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time.

We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

If you're familiar with a principle you don't have to be familiar with all of its applications.