Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity.

It is not in vain that man speaks to man. This is the value of literature.

There is always some accident in the best things, whether thoughts or expressions or deeds. The memorable thought, the happy expression, the admirable deed are only partly ours.

I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.

The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.

Even the best things are not equal to their fame.

We begin to praise when we begin to see a thing needs our assistance.

If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life.

The child should have the advantage of ignorance as well as of knowledge, and is fortunate if he gets his share of neglect and exposure.

To him whom contemplates a trait of natural beauty, no harm nor despair can come. The doctrines of despair, spiritual or political servitude, were never taught by those who shared the serenity of Nature. For each phase of Nature, though not invisible, is yet not too distinct or obtrusive. It is there to be found when we look for it, but not too demanding of our attention.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

We do not live by justice, but by grace.

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

Perhaps of all our untamed quadrupeds, the fox has obtained the widest and most familiar reputation.... His recent tracks still give variety to a winter's walk. I tread in the steps of the fox that has gone before me by some hours, or which perhaps I have started, with such a tip-toe of expectation as if I were on the trail of the Spirit itself which resides in the wood, and expected soon to catch it in its lair.

It is worth the while to live respectably unto ourselves. We can possibly get along with a neighbor, even with a bedfellow, whom we respect but very little; but as soon as it comes to this, that we do not respect ourselves, then we do not get along at all, no matter how much money we are paid for halting.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

A stranger may easily detect what is strange to the oldest inhabitant, for the strange is his province.

Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom everywhere.

All men are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are the physically dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue is no longer such if it be stagnant. A man's life should be constantly as fresh as this river. It should be the same channel, but a new water every instant.

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.

You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying or inquisitive, not bent on seeing things. Throw away a whole day for a single expansion, a single inspiration of air. You must walk so gently as to hear the finest sounds, the faculties being in repose. 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.

Nothing can shock a brave man but dullness.

Sincerity is a great but rare virtue, and we pardon to it much complaining, and the betrayal of many weaknesses.

Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.

Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?... We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever.

I learned to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of nature, rather than a member of society.

Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.

It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.

There is reason in the distinction of civil and uncivil. The manners are sometimes so rough a rind that we doubt whether they cover any core or sap-wood at all.

A man sits as many risks as he runs.

Man emulates earth Earth emulates heaven Heaven emulates the Way The way emulates nature.

There must be some nerve and heroism in our love, as of a winter morning.

As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prarie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits.

It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison might help to liberalize the faith of men.... This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth.

The wise are not so much wiser than others as respecters of their own wisdom.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man, - you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, - I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that.

There is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by the use of "expediency." There is no such thing as sliding up- hill.In morals the only sliders are backsliders.

I never read a novel, they have so little real life and thought in them.

The New Testament is an invaluable book, though I confess to having been slightly prejudiced against it in my very early days by the church and the Sabbath school, so that it seemed, before I read it, to be the yellowest book in the catalogue. Yet I early escaped from their meshes. It was hard to get the commentaries out of one's head and taste its true flavor. [...] It would be a poor story to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ because the book has been edited by Christians.

Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, or eventhe Elizabethan men. But what is that to the purpose? A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.

When we are in health, all sounds fife and drum for us; we hear the notes of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the dawn.

Impulse is, after all, the best linguist; its logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most convincing.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind.

Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought, go about doing good.

It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.

If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.

Every sentence is the result of a long probation.