Top 2798 Quotes & Sayings by Henry David Thoreau - Page 3

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American author Henry David Thoreau.

Last updated on November 21, 2024.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Henry David Thoreau

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

Henry David Thoreau

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

Henry David Thoreau

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

Henry David Thoreau

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

Henry David Thoreau

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

Henry David Thoreau

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

Henry David Thoreau

Simplify, simplify.

Henry David Thoreau

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

Henry David Thoreau

The universe is wider than our views of it.

Henry David Thoreau

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Henry David Thoreau

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.

Henry David Thoreau

To be awake is to be alive.

Henry David Thoreau

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

Henry David Thoreau

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

Henry David Thoreau

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

Henry David Thoreau

There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.

Henry David Thoreau

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.

Henry David Thoreau

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

Henry David Thoreau

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.

Henry David Thoreau

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

Henry David Thoreau

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

Henry David Thoreau

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

Henry David Thoreau

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

Henry David Thoreau

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

Henry David Thoreau

That government is best which governs least.

Henry David Thoreau

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

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.

Henry David Thoreau

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.

Henry David Thoreau

I cannot read a single word of the Hindoos without being elevated.

Henry David Thoreau

If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.

Henry David Thoreau

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

Henry David Thoreau

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

Henry David Thoreau

There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted.

Henry David Thoreau

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.

Henry David Thoreau

How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

Henry David Thoreau

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.

Henry David Thoreau

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Henry David Thoreau

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

Henry David Thoreau

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

Henry David Thoreau

Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.

Henry David Thoreau

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

Henry David Thoreau

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.

Henry David Thoreau

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

Henry David Thoreau

While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.

Henry David Thoreau

It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

Henry David Thoreau

As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.

Henry David Thoreau

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

Henry David Thoreau

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

Henry David Thoreau

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

Henry David Thoreau

I have the habit of attention to such excess, that my senses get no rest - but suffer from a constant strain.

Henry David Thoreau

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

Henry David Thoreau

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

Henry David Thoreau

May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!

Henry David Thoreau

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.

Henry David Thoreau

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

Henry David Thoreau

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Henry David Thoreau

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

Henry David Thoreau

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

Henry David Thoreau

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

Henry David Thoreau