Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.

No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.

What I am must make you forget what I wear.

It is the greatest of advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.

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

I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things.

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

All good things are wild and free.

The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

Our taste is too delicate and particular. It says nay to the poet's work, but never yea to his hope.

There are two seasons when the leaves are in their glory, their green and perfect youth in June and this their ripe old age.

How did these beautiful rainbow tints get into the shell of the freshwater clam buried in the mud at the bottom of our dark river? Even the sea-bottom tells of the upper skies.

Be yourself -- not your idea of what you think somebody else's idea of yourself should be.

In the wilderness is the salvation of the world.

Be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely invested.

Hinduism is the soil into which India's roots are stuck and torn out of that she will inevitably wither as a tree torn out from its place.

Make no mistake, without Hinduism, India has no future.

Improve every opportunity to be melancholy.

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.

One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in.

Nothing makes the earth so spacious as to have friends at a distance.

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.

The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us.

One must maintain a little bit of summer even in the middle of winter.

As I go through the woods now, so many oak and other leaves have fallen the rustling noise somewhat disturbs my musing.

You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake; you must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand heap.

This is the month of nuts and nutty thoughts,--that November whose name sounds so bleak and cheerless. Perhaps its harvest of thought is worth more than all the other crops of the year.

How few are aware that in winter, when the earth is covered with snow and ice...the sunset is double. The winter is coming when I shall walk the sky.

All expression of truth does at length take this deep ethical form.

Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.

One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter.

The 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.

The wildness and adventure that are in fishing still recommend it to me.

Be true to your work your word and your friend.

Satan from one of his elevations, showed mankind the kingdom of California, and they entered into a compact with him at once.

Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.

You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might.

Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. -- .

Cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off.

There is no treatment for adore, but to love far more.

I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable; but my friend is my amiableness personified.

Nature is an admirable schoolmistress.

On every hand we observe a truly wise practice, in education, in morals, and in the arts of life, the embodied wisdom of many an ancient philosopher.

Unless we do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but apprentices, and not yet masters of the art of life.

I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.

As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this country.

When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality?

It enriches us infinitely to recognize greater qualities than we possess in another.

The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man.

When the far mountains are invisible, the near ones look the higher.

Events, circumstances, etc., have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown.

Every man is entitled to come to Cattle-Show, even a transcendentalist; and for my part I am more interested in the men than in the cattle.

Friends will be much apart. They will respect more each other's privacy than their communion.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction.

When a man's conscience and the laws clash, it is his conscience that he must follow.

I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows.

As far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched.

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

They take great pride in making their dinner cost much; I take my pride in making my dinner cost so little.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.

Wealth cannot purchase any great private solace or convenience. Riches are only the means of sociality.

I am a citizen of the world first, and of this country at a later and more convenient hour.

This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore.

Most people dread finding out when they come to die that they have never really lived.

It is said that some Western steamers can run on a heavy dew, whence we can imagine what a canoe may do.

A journal, is a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy, what you are grateful for.

Every man must walk to the beat of his own drummer.

Where there is not discernment, the behavior even of the purest soul may in effect amount to coarseness.

An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not.

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.

Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.

Do not despair of your life. You have force enough to overcome your obstacles.

What is the use of going right over the old track again? There is an adder in the path which your own feet have worn. You must make tracks into the Unknown.

Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

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

Endeavor to live the life you have imagined.

He who rides and keeps the beaten track studies the fences chiefly.

The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.

One is wise to cultivate the tree that bears fruit in our soul.

As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism never fails.

Insane!... Ask the tyrant who is his most dangerous foe, the sane man or the insane?

Yet we must try the harder, the less the prospect of success.

How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character?

Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.

The greater number of men are merely corporals.

The higher the mountain on which you stand, the less change in the prospect from year to year, from age to age. Above a certain height there is no change.

The highest condition of art is artlessness.

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

I thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten today, that I might go a- fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have learned.

I have learned that even the smallest house can be a home.

Love is no individual's experience; and though we are imperfect mediums, it does not partake of our imperfection; though we are finite, it is infinite and eternal.

When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?

When the true criminals are running around free, the only honorable place for a decent human being is in prisons.

Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.

Every man should stand for a force which is perfectly irresistible.

No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world.

Trade and commerce, if they were not made of Indian rubber, would never manage to bounce over the obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way.

Pity the man who has a character to support -- it is worse than a large family -- he is silent poor indeed.

We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.

Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of.

With wisdom we shall learn liberality.

The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.

We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.

Friendship is evanescent in every man's experience, and remembered like heat lightning in past summers.

There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.

The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.

The poet who walks by moonlight is conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be referred to lunar influence.

It is no more dusky in ordinary nights than our mind's habitual atmosphere, and the moonlight is as bright as our most illuminatedmoments are.

How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.

Oh, one world at a time!

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

I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society.

The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.

Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her.

At present our only true names are nicknames.

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.

Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.

If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.

Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!

Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.

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

Many old people receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long time ago.

Be as the sailor who keeps the polestar in his eye. By so doing we may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we will maintain a true course.

For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it.

The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.

I do not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster.

The true finish is the work of time, and the use to which a thing is put. The elements are still polishing the pyramids.

The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last.

Man's moral nature is a riddle which only eternity can solve.

Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a different season.

The mass of men are very easily imposed on. They have their runways in which they always travel, and are sure to fall into any pit or box-trap set therein.

Routine is a ground to stand on, a wall to retreat to; we cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against it.

From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality.

There are more consequences to a shipwreck than the underwriters notice.

If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.

Consider what stuff history is made of, -- that for the most part it is merely a story agreed on by posterity.

In the summer we lay up a stock of experiences for the winter, as the squirrel of nuts?something for conversation in winter evenings.

The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes.

Let things alone; let them weigh what they will; let them soar or fall.

The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its essence.

It is the man determines what is said, not the words.

Are you in want of amusement nowadays? Then play a little at the game of getting a living. There was never anything equal to it. Do it temperately, though, and don't sweat.

I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot.

Truth, Goodness, Beauty -- those celestial thrins,Continually are born; e'en now the Universe,With thousand throats, and eke with greener smiles,Its joy confesses at their recent birth.

We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor.

Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.

We fritter away our energy and creativity ...
we get bogged down in the thick of thin things.

I think that no experience which I have today comes up to, or is comparable with, the experiences of my boyhood.

Truth is always paradoxical.

If you would feel the full force of a tempest, take up your residence on the top of Mount Washington, or at the Highland Light, inTruro.

A man's whole life is taxed for the least thing well done. It is its net result.

If common sense had been consulted, how many marriages would never have taken place; if uncommon or divine sense, how few marriages such as we witness would ever have taken place!

It takes a man of genius to travel in his own country, in his native village; to make any progress between his door and his gate.

The movements of the eyes express the perpetual and unconscious courtesy of the parties.

In the winter, warmth stands for all virtue.

When I would go a-visiting, I find that I go off the fashionable street, -- not being inclined to change my dress, -- to where man meets man, and not polished shoe meets shoe.

As polishing expresses the vein in marble, and grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole patron of music.

If you look over a list of medicinal recipes in vogue in the last century, how foolish and useless they are seen to be! And yet we use equally absurd ones with faith today.

We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many.

I should consider it a greater success to interest one wise and earnest soul, than a million unwise and frivolous.

Good deeds are no less good because their object is unworthy.

In Literature it is only the wild that attracts us.

In short, all good things are wild and free.

We need the tonic of wildness.

Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.

What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own.

Give me a Wildness whose glance no civilization can endure.

The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild, and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World.

Expect no trivial truth from me, unless I am on the witness- stand. I will come as near to lying as you can drive a coach and four.

Far from New England's blustering shore,New England's worm her hulk shall bore,And sink her in the Indian seas,Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas.

Why will we be imposed on by antiquity?

English sense has toiled, but Hindoo wisdom never perspired.

The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There is no telling what it may not vomit up.

I have found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources.

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

If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you ... break the law.

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.

I am amused to see from my window here how busily a man has divided and staked off his domain. God must smile at his puny fences running hither and thither everywhere over the land.

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

The whole of the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour, if not more, which the day did not bring forth.

The Slothful do not have the time to become virtuous or despicable.

In their daily life, all are braver than they know.

The most difficult thing to understand during conversation is silence.

I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus.

A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.

Today...the bluebirds, old and young, have revisited their box, as if they would fain repeat the summer without intervention of winter, if Nature would let them.

What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is.

If you would be chaste, you must be temperate.

We make needless ado about capital punishment, -- taking lives, when there is no life to take.

This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle!

I know very well what Goethe meant when he said that he never had a chagrin but he made a poem out of it. I have altogether too much patience of this kind.

A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him.

The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely.

The inhabitants of Canada appeared to be suffering between two fires, -- the soldiery and the priesthood.

It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.

The sort of morality which the priests inculcate is a very subtle policy, far finer than the politicians', and the world is very successfully ruled by them as the policemen.

A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart.

I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.

The theories and speculations of men concern us more than their puny accomplishment. It is with a certain coldness and languor that we loiter about the actual and so-called practical.

Knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.

I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour.

Renew thyself completely each day.

What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!

The forests are held cheap after the white pine has been culled out; and the explorers and hunters pray for rain only to clear theatmosphere of smoke.

While my friend was my friend, he flattered me, and I never heard the truth from him. When he became my enemy, he shot it to me on a poisoned arrow.

Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.

It is very rare that you meet with obstacles in this world, which the humblest man has not faculties to surmount.

It is good even to be a fisherman in summer and in winter.

It will always be found that one flourishing institution exists and battens on another mouldering one. The Present itself is parasitic to this extent.

The earth I tread on is not a dead inert mass. It is a body, has a spirit; is organic and fluid to the influence of its spirit and to whatever particle of the spirit is in me.

It is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His natural foe is the government that drills him.

Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law.

As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.

The whole body of what is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature are the purest morality.

He who receives an injury is to some extent an accomplice of the wrong-doer.

In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake.

Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present.

All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.

If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.

Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics.

It is the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.

It's the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.

The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.

Being a teacher is like being in jail; once it's on your record, you can never get rid of it.

The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.

It is not enough that we are truthful; we must cherish and carry out high purposes to be truthful about.

Invariably our best nights were those when it rained.

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.

The virtue of making two blades of grass grow where only one grew before does not begin to be superhuman.

If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even,- for that is the seat of sympathy,-he forthwith sets about reforming the world.

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such.

Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.

The inhabitants of the Cape generally do not complain of their soil, but will tell you that it is good enough for them to dry their fish on.

Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work.

There is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science can never span.

Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself, That in my action I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye.

If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer; but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless.

The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will poison you.

We have the St. Vitus' dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still.

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

Tough times don't last but tough people do.
No matter how slow you go, you are still lapping everybody on the couch.
Men are born to succeed, not fail.

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

My soul and body have tottered along together of late, tripping and hindering one another like unpracticed Siamese twins.

When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip.

He who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind, is yet but half alive, is still-born.

We are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. We can never have enough of nature.

Your richest veins don't lie nearest the surface.

The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from mere gluttony.

Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted is method.

It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women.

Men cannot conceive of a state of things so fair that it cannot be realized.

You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.

Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

The fault finder will find faults even in paradise and thereby miss the joys that recognition of the positives bring.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.

The artist and his work are not to be separated. The most willfully foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly, but the deed and the doer together make ever one sober fact.

Wealth can't buy heath, but heath can buy wealth.

We live but a fraction of our lives.

The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.

The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.

I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper.

When I think of the gold-diggers and the Mormons, the slaves and the slave-holders and the flibustiers, I naturally dream of a glorious private life. No, I am not patriotic.

The bad are frequently good enough to let you see how bad they are, but the good as frequently endeavor to get between you and themselves.

We loiter in winter while it is already spring.

I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking water only.

Whatever is, and is not ashamed to be, is good.

Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another.

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.

Truly, our greatest blessings are very cheap.

Hold fast to your most indefinite, waking dream.

How many a poor immortal soul I have met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it an oversized home.

The devil finds work for idle hands.

Enemies publish themselves. They declare war. The friend never declares his love.

So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.

I was daily intoxicated, yet no man could call me intemperate.

Music never stops; it is only the listening that is intermittent.

Government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.

Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

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

What is commonly called friendship is only a little more honor among rogues.

I look upon England today as an old gentleman who is travelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated fromlong housekeeping, which he has not the courage to burn.

Be it life or death, we crave only reality.

Live free, child of the mist,- and with respect to knowledge we are allchildren of the mist.

The Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots.

How many things are now at loose ends! Who knows which way the wind will blow tomorrow?

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it.

I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account.