Quotes by Henry David Thoreau
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I did not know that we had ever quarreled.

One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense.

The mason asks but a narrow shelf to spring his brick from; man requires only an infinitely narrower one to spring his arch of faith from.

It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump.

The vessel, though her masts be firm,Beneath her copper bears a worm.

A hero's love is as delicate as a maiden's.

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

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.

In the unbending of the arm to do the deed there is experience worth all the maxims in the world.

You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you.

Give me a country where it is the most natural thing in the world for a government that does not understand you to let you alone.

News Coverage! As news expose rather than cover events.

I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. It never jests. It is cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and relie on the earth.

New earths, new themes expect us.

Music is perpetual, and only the hearing is intermittent.

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

As naturally as the oak bears an acorn and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done.

Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.

We cannot put a noose around another man's neck without first hanging ourselves.

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.

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.

Give me a sentence which no intelligence can understand. There must be a kind of life and palpitation to it, and under its words akind of blood must circulate forever.

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and Spring.

The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, commonly.

The world, which the Greeks called Beauty, has been made such by being gradually divested of every ornament which was not fitted to endure.

I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side.

We are all of us more or less active physiognomists.

The first pleasant days of spring come out like a squirrel and go in again.

I should have liked to come across a large community of pines, which had never been invaded by the lumbering army.

I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beechtree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.

The young pines springing up in the corn-fields from year to year are to me a refreshing fact.

There is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine, is no more a pine than a dead human carcass is a man.

Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.

The purity men love is like the mists which envelope the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond.

Christ is the prince of Reformers and Radicals.

There are theoretical reformers at all times, and all the world over, living on anticipation.

I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.

I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future.

Time is like a handful of sand -- the tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers.

I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.

The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours ... but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.

I was born upon thy bank, river, My blood flows in thy stream, And thou meanderest forever, At the bottom of my dream.

My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant.

The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes their widest deductions.

There is more religion in men's science, than there is science in their religion.

Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.

Never trust any thought arrived at sitting down.

Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster, both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very late, he honestly slumbered a fool's allowance.

I will come to you, my friend, when I no longer need you. Then you will find a palace, not an almshouse.

If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

The only sin in the world is ignorance.

Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.

The scenery, when it is truly seen, reacts on the life of the seer. How to live. How to get the most of life.... How to extract its honey from the flower of the world.

I know of no redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved I fall back on to this ground.

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bone.

As I love nature, as I love singing birds...I love thee, my friend.

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

When I visit again some haunt of my youth, I am glad to find that nature wears so well. The landscape is indeed something real, and solid, and sincere, and I have not put my foot through it yet.

To a small man every greater is an exaggeration.

Even in civilized communities, the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of development.

The world is a strange place for a playhouse to stand within it.

True kindness is a pure divine affinity, Not founded upon human consanguinity. It is a spirit, not a blood relation, Superior to family and station.

Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even stone walls have their foundation below the frost.

The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams.

Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.

They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself.

The tavern will compare favorably with the church.

It is strange to talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration, and the like, as things past, while love remains.

As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole life.

The music of all creatures has to do with their loves, even of toads and frogs. Is it not the same with man?

The stars are the apexes of what triangles!

We do not enjoy poetry unless we know it to be poetry.

As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full.

Everything may serve a lower as well as a higher use.

O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed.

Where the citizen uses a mere sliver or board, the pioneer uses the whole trunk of a tree.

I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect...always when I have done I feel it would have been better if I had not fished.

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.

In an unjust society the only place for a just man is prison.

Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin!

As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.

In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin.

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener.

Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe.

Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.

The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode.

No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.

While some men believe in the infinite, some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.

I am too easily contented with a slight and almost animal happiness. My happiness is a good deal like that of the woodchucks.

We must take root; send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day.

Poetry implies the whole truth. Philosophy expresses a particle of it.

It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret in the woods.

I love you not as something private and personal, which is my own, but as something universal and worthy of love which I have found.

Write while the heat is in you.

To say that God has given a man many and great talents frequently means that he has brought his heavens down within reach of his hands.

Life is so short that it is not wise to take roundabout ways, nor can we spend much time in waiting.... We have not got half-way to dawn yet.

What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.