Explore Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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

That grand old poem called Winter

When I consider how, after sunset, the stars come out gradually in troops from behind the hills and woods, I confess that I could not have contrived a more curious and inspiring sight.

Books that are books are all that you want, and there are but a half dozen in any thousand.

We believe that the possibility of the future far exceeds the accomplishment of the past. We review the past with the common sense, but we anticipate the future with transcendental senses. In our sanest moments we find ourselves naturally expecting or prepared for far greater changes than any which we have experienced within the period of distinct memory, only to be paralleled by experiences which are forgotten.

Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly.

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

No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?

In solitude especialy do we begin to appreciate the advantage of living with someone who can think.

Sometimes you have to leave the world in order to learn how to live in it. Thoreau shunned society, went to the woods, and came back with a new understanding of life.

Oh to reach the point of death and realize one has not lived at all.

A man sits as many risks as he runs.

I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.

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

My themes will not be far-fetched. I will tell of homely every-day phenomena and adventures.

As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth.

To what end do I lead a simple life at all, pray? That I may teach others to simplify their lives? - and so all our lives be simplified merely, like an algebraic formula? Or not, rather, that I may make use of the ground I have cleared to live more worthily and profitably?

Simplicity is the law of nature for men as well as for flowers.

The rule is to carry as little as possible.

The savage lives simply through ignorance and idleness or laziness, but the philosopher lives simply through wisdom.