Henry David Thoreau Quotes

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

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

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost.

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

Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

The soul grows by subtraction, not addition.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

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.

Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way?

Waves of a serene life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

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

Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other's hopes. They are kind to each other's dreams.

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.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

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

How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.

You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.

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

We are all of us more or less active physiognomists.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

Let nothing come between you and the light.

The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny and trivial.

Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?

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

Where shall we look for standard English, but to the words of a standard man?

When a soldier is hit by a cannonball, rags are as becoming as purple.

I lingered most about the fireplace, as the most vital part of the house.

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.

I am still a learner, not a teacher, feeding somewhat omnivorously, browsing both stalk & leaves

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

Nature is slow, but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance.

Wherever there is a channel for water, there is a road for the canoe.

Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.

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