Henry David Thoreau Quotes

One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.

The indescribable innocence of and beneficence of Nature,-of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter,-such health, such cheer, they afford forever!

One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.

In the long run, you hit only what you aim at.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

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

What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.

Since most of us spend our lives doing ordinary tasks, the most important thing is to carry them out extraordinarily well.

There is only one path to Heaven. On Earth, we call it Love.

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.

. . . we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

I have no time to be in a hurry.

Almost all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming traits even to the eye.

Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man.

The universe is wider than our views of it.

The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.

We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.

The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.

A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it, than by the woods and swamps that surround it.

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

What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?

The voice of nature is always encouraging.

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and Spring.

The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard.

It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination

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

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book.

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

What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a winter's day?

We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.

A bore is someone who takes away my solitude and doesn't give me companionship in return.

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.

What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties!

We only need to be as true to others as we are to ourselves, that there may be grounds enough for friendship.

The meeting of two eternities, the past and future....is precisely the present moment.

I make myself rich by making my wants few.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

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

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

My profession is to always find God in nature.

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

In a world of peace and love, music would be the universal language.

Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!

Give me a Wildness whose glance no civilization can endure.

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.

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

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

It often happens that a man develops a deeper love and friendship with his pet cat or dog than he does with most of the other humans in his life.