Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives.

En büyük ve en yayg?n hatalar?n sürdürülebilmesi için olabildiÄŸince tarafs?z bir erdem gerekir.

To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions; and I am confident that, as our circumstances are more flourishing, our means are greater than the nobleman's.

the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

Ä°lkeli eylemler, hakk?n idraki ve icras?, ÅŸeyleri ve iliÅŸkileri deÄŸiÅŸtirir; bu da özünde devrimci bir davran??t?r ve yaln?zca geçmiÅŸte de devrimci olan ÅŸeylerden ibaret deÄŸildir. Devletleri ve kiliseleri bölmekle kalmaz, aileleri de böler; evet, içindeki ÅŸeytani yan? kutsal olandan ay?rarak bireyi de böler.

I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life.

I went to the woods because I wished to live delibertely, 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.

Mi vida fue el poema que habría escrito, pero no podía vivirlo y pronunciarlo

there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.

I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both.

Your religion is where your love is.

Cuando se me condena, y cuando yo mismo me condeno enteramente, enseguida pienso: pero puedo contar con mi amor hacia algunas cosas. Y ahí estoy pleno y entero. Ahí es donde Dios me sostiene

We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten.

Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them. I

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously course labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.

By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.

When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described, what does he want next? Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous, incessant, and hotter fires, and the like. When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced.

I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west. Within a few years we have witnessed the phenomenon of a southeastward migration, in the settlement of Australia; but this affects us as a retrograde movement, and, judging from the moral and physical character of the first generation of Australians, has not yet proved a successful experiment.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things.

I need thy hate as much as thy love.

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