Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him . . he will be surrounded by grandeur.

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.

Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.

It makes no odds where a man goes or stays, if he is only about his business.

As a man thinks of himself, so he is.

The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.

Truly the stars were given for a consolation to man.

That man is richest who's pleasure are cheapest.

The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.

Nature has left nothing to the mercy of man.

One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputation; another in his manners, and enjoys a good one.

A man can suffocate on courtesy.

Let a slight snow come and cover the earth, and the tracks of men will show how little the woods and fields are frequented.

The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.

But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried.

The mason asks but a narrow shelf to spring his brick from; man requires only an infinitely narrower one to spring his arch of faith from.

It is the man determines what is said, not the words.

Fishing has been styled 'a contemplative man's recreation,' ... and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage.

All that man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love-to sing, and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love.

The foul slime stands for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity; the fragrant flower that springs from it, for the purity and courage which are immortal.

I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know!

Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man.