Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

You must converse much with the field and the woods if you would imbibe such health into your mind and spirit as you covet for your body

A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent.

Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted,but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.

I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home.

Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across lots.

You must ascend a mountain to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body, for it is at home there, though you are not.

What is commonly called friendship is only a little more honor among rogues.

All things in this world must be seen with youthful, hopeful eyes.

We soon get through with nature. She excites an expectation which she cannot satisfy.

I am accustomed to think very long of going anywhere,--am slow to move. I hope to hear a response of the oracle first.

We slander the hyena; man is the fiercest and cruelest animal.

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.

Humor, however broad and genial, takes a narrower view than enthusiasm.

We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected.

In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd.

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

Some simple dishes recommend themselves to our imaginations as well as palates.

The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes.

We should endeavor practically in our lives to correct all the defects which our imagination detects.

I am engaged to Concord and my own private pursuits by 10,000 ties, and it would be suicide to rend them.

Genius is not a retainer to any emperor.

Why will we be imposed on by antiquity?

What have I to do with plows? I cut another furrow than you see.