Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

The heart is forever inexperienced.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

We must look a long time before we can see

Of what use were it, pray, to get a little wood to burn, to warm your body this cold weather, if there were not a divine fire kindled at the same time to warm your spirit?

Asked whether or not he believed in an afterlife, Thoreau quipped, "One world at a time."

Time & Co. are, after all, the only quite honest and trustworthy publishers that we know.

Take Time by the forelock. It is also the safest part to take a serpent by.

Summer passes into autumn in some unimaginable point of time, like the turning of a leaf.

There are theoretical reformers at all times, and all the world over, living on anticipation.

Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.

It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time.

As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism never fails.

I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came?--till you and I came over to him?

Don't spend your time in drilling soldiers, who may turn out hirelings after all, but give to undrilled peasantry a country to fight for.

The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down.

Winter is the time for study, you know, and the colder it is the more studious we are.

Ktaadnis an Indian word signifying highest land,... very few, even among backwoodsmen and hunters, have ever climbed it, andit will be a long time before the tide of fashionable travel sets that way.

Ninety-nine one-hundredths of our lives we are mere hedgers and ditchers, but from time to time we meet with reminders of our destiny.

A man who has to go to the village to get the news hasn't heard from himself in a long time.

What a glorious time they must have in that wilderness, far from mankind and election day!

If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.

No domain of nature is quite closed to man at all times.