Henry David Thoreau Quotes

“The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful.”

“The wise are not so much wiser than others as respecters of their own wisdom.”

“We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit.... But though it is full of good sense and humanity, it is not transcendent poetry.For picturesque description of persons it is, perhaps, without a parallel in English poetry; yet it is essentially humorous, as the loftiest genius never is.”

“As our domestic fowls are said to have their original in the wild pheasant of India, so our domestic thoughts have their prototypes in the thoughts of her philosophers.”

“From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality.”

“As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.”

“One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.”

“Do not read the newspapers.”

“There are two classes of men called poets. The one cultivates life, the other art,... one satisfies hunger, the other gratifies the palate.”

“For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it.”

“When the chopper would praise a pine, he will commonly tell you that the one he cut was so big that a yoke of oxen stood on its stump; as if that were what the pine had grown for, to become the footstool of oxen.”

“Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever.”

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

“I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”

“Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body.”

“No mortal is alert enough to be present at the first dawn of spring.”

“Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.”

“I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is - I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?”

“A taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors”

“In my walks, I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods if I am thinking of something out of the woods?”

“It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.”

“A fact may blossom into a truth.”

“If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?”

“To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done,and I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment of my domestic arrangements.”

“If a man were to place himself in an attitude to bear manfully the greatest evil that can be inflicted on him, he would find suddenly that there was no such evil to bear; his brave back would go a-begging.”