Henry David Thoreau Quotes
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Men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.
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The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
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My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read,'Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at largeDown in the meadow, where is richer feed,And will not mind to hit their proper targe.
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If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!
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I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.
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It is a great art to saunter.
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Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
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Some old poet's grand imagination is imposed on us as adamantine everlasting truth, and God's own word! Pythagoras says, truly enough, 'A true assertion respecting God, is an assertion of God'; but we may well doubt if there is any example of this in literature.
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Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
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Of what significance the things you can forget? A little thought is sexton to all the world.
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Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us.
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Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.
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Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.
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The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.
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It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.
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A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be Uranus, or it may be in the shutter.
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The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls - the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.
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I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.
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Far from New England's blustering shore,New England's worm her hulk shall bore,And sink her in the Indian seas,Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas.
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Truth, Goodness, Beauty - those celestial thrins,Continually are born; e'en now the Universe,With thousand throats, and eke with greener smiles,Its joy confesses at their recent birth.