Henry David Thoreau

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured and far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak.

— Henry David Thoreau

To watch this crystal globe just sent from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this somber drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another. The gathering in of the clouds with the last rush and dying breath of the wind, and then the regular dripping of twigs and leaves the country over, the impression of inward comfort and Sociableness, the drenched stubble and trees that drop beads on you as you pass, their dim outline seen through the rain on all sides drooping in sympathy with yourself. These are my undisputed territory. This is Nature's English comfort.

— Henry David Thoreau

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

— Henry David Thoreau

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.

— Henry David Thoreau

I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology.

— Henry David Thoreau

To regret deeply is to live afresh.

— Henry David Thoreau

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it come to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

— Henry David Thoreau

What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

— Henry David Thoreau

We live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.

— Henry David Thoreau

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

— Henry David Thoreau

The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.

— Henry David Thoreau

A man sits as many risks as he runs.

— Henry David Thoreau

Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.

— Henry David Thoreau

Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.

— Henry David Thoreau

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.

— Henry David Thoreau

The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly.

— Henry David Thoreau

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveler, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its entireness.

— Henry David Thoreau

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet drink and botanical medicines.

— Henry David Thoreau

We are constantly invited to be who we are.

— Henry David Thoreau

I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limit of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced. Extravagance! it depends on how you are yarded.

— Henry David Thoreau

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

— Henry David Thoreau

Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.

— Henry David Thoreau

I know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection; and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is no part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.

— Henry David Thoreau

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice.

— Henry David Thoreau

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

— Henry David Thoreau

I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.

— Henry David Thoreau

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

— Henry David Thoreau

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

— Henry David Thoreau

We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.

— Henry David Thoreau

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.

— Henry David Thoreau

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.

— Henry David Thoreau

I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.

— Henry David Thoreau

Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone... I never yet met with, or heard of, a judge who was not a slave of this kind, and so the finest and most unfailing weapon of injustice. He fetches a slightly higher price than the black men only because he is a more valuable slave.

— Henry David Thoreau

What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.

— Henry David Thoreau

Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality.

— Henry David Thoreau

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone, I never found the companionable as solitude.

— Henry David Thoreau

I have never found a companion so companionable as solitude.

— Henry David Thoreau

I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

— Henry David Thoreau

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

— Henry David Thoreau

However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.

— Henry David Thoreau

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

— Henry David Thoreau

The stars are the apexes of what triangles!

— Henry David Thoreau

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few went to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.

— Henry David Thoreau

You must get your living by loving, or at least half your life is a failure.

— Henry David Thoreau

We were born to succeed, not to fail.

— Henry David Thoreau

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

— Henry David Thoreau

The sun is but a morning star.

— Henry David Thoreau

We are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspected.

— Henry David Thoreau

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

— 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

Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces of those who live in true meekness.

— Henry David Thoreau

A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as this brain.

— Henry David Thoreau

Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.

— Henry David Thoreau

To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.

— Henry David Thoreau

Associate reverently, as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.

— Henry David Thoreau

How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.

— Henry David Thoreau

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.

— Henry David Thoreau

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

— Henry David Thoreau

Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It's thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

— Henry David Thoreau

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

— Henry David Thoreau

You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.

— Henry David Thoreau

But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.

— Henry David Thoreau

That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest?

— Henry David Thoreau

He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.

— Henry David Thoreau

Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.

— Henry David Thoreau

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.

— Henry David Thoreau

Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love.

— Henry David Thoreau

It takes two to speak truth -- one to speak, and another to hear.

— Henry David Thoreau

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

— Henry David Thoreau

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

— Henry David Thoreau

The universe is wider than our views of it.

— Henry David Thoreau

One farmer says to me, You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with; and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.

— Henry David Thoreau

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

— Henry David Thoreau

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.

— Henry David Thoreau

There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.

— Henry David Thoreau

I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.

— Henry David Thoreau

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.

— Henry David Thoreau

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

— Henry David Thoreau

I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.

— Henry David Thoreau

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.

— Henry David Thoreau

Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

— Henry David Thoreau

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

— Henry David Thoreau

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

— Henry David Thoreau

We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.

— Henry David Thoreau

Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.

— Henry David Thoreau

It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

— Henry David Thoreau

Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.

— Henry David Thoreau

It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.

— Henry David Thoreau

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.

— Henry David Thoreau

Men have become the tools of their trade.

— Henry David Thoreau

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

— 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

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

— Henry David Thoreau

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit -- not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviate from their graves.

— Henry David Thoreau

All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.

— Henry David Thoreau

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

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.

— Henry David Thoreau

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.

— Henry David Thoreau

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

— Henry David Thoreau