Henry David Thoreau

“I have heard of a minister, who had been a fisherman, being settled in Bridgewater for as long a time as he could tell a cod froma haddock. Generous as it seems, this condition would empty most country pulpits forthwith, for it is long since the fishers of men were fishermen.”

“The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, - so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.”

“It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.”

“A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.”

“But they who are unconcerned about the consequences of their actions are not therefore unconcerned about their actions.”

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

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

“We go on dating from Cold Fridays and Great Snows; but a little colder Friday, or greater snow would put a period to man's existence on the globe.”

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

“My greatest skill has been to want but little.”

“A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.”

“I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.”

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

“I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.”

“Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading?”

“If thousands are thrown out of employment, it suggests that they were not well employed. Why don't they take the hint? It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?”

“The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.”

“What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?”

“Everything that is printed and bound in a book contains some echo at least of the best that is in literature.”

“Let the beautiful laws prevail. Let us not weary ourselves by resisting them.”

“Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom everywhere.”

“Real power is measured by how much you can let things be.”

“To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, andflatter and study effect only more finely than the rest.”

“I have not the most definite designs on the future.”

“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

“As long as I have the friendship of the sesasons life will never be a burden to me.”

“If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,--and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,--it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and 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.”

“I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.”

“Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.”

“Tradition is a more interrupted and feebler memory.”

“It is not easy to make our lives respectable by any course of activity. We must repeatedly withdraw into our shells of thought, like the tortoise, somewhat helplessly; yet there is more than philosophy in that.”

“Any moral philosophy is exceedingly rare. This of Menu addresses our privacy more than most. It is a more private and familiar, and at the same time, a more public and universal word, than is spoken in parlor or pulpit nowadays.”

“I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.”

“Even trees do not die without a groan.”

“Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towardsrecognizing and organizing the rights of man?”

“The discoveries which we make abroad are special and particular; those which we make at home are general and significant. The further off, the nearer the surface. The nearer home, the deeper.”

“I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both inperson and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait until they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.”

“Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime?”

“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.”

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

“It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.”

“If you're familiar with a principle you don't have to be familiar with all of its applications.”

“Poverty ... It is life near the bone, where it is sweetest.”

“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.”

“We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, but very little of it has yet been sung. The ancients had a juster notion of their poetic value than we.”

“A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.”

“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind.”

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

“You need not rest your reputation on the dinners you give.”

“The thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of. The mite which November contributes becomes equal in value to the bounty of July.”