Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

I am a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure.

At the extreme north, the voyagers are obliged to dance and act plays for employment.

What is the use of going right over the old track again? There is an adder in the path which your own feet have worn. You must make tracks into the Unknown.

We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always.

I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.

Trees indeed have hearts.

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.

One is wise to cultivate the tree that bears fruit in our soul.

The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree's, so copious and so delicious to both sight and scent.

"Hear! hear!" screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, "winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it."

The tree of Knowledge is a Tree of Knowledge of good and evil.

Where the citizen uses a mere sliver or board, the pioneer uses the whole trunk of a tree.

I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings.

Even trees do not die without a groan.

In the planting of the seeds of most trees, the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may not know it.

I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.

A sufficiently great and generous trust could never be abused.

No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow.

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.

I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it.

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.

May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!

Those whom we can love, we can hate; to others we are indifferent.