Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

The ears were made, not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds.

Man needs to know but little more than a lobster in order to catch him in his traps.

Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.

Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild - not tamed and broken by society.

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

If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.

As naturally as the oak bears an acorn and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.

Men must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one.

A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him.

We are ashamed of our fear; for we know that a righteous man would not suspect danger nor incur any. Wherever a man feels fear, there is an avenger.

How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We all live according to rule. Some men are bedridden; all world-ridden.

How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.

Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail.

The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.

A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as this brain.

I do not judge men by anything they can do. Their greatest deed is the impression they make on me.

How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?

Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.