Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

A hero's love is as delicate as a maiden's.

It is strange to talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration, and the like, as things past, while love remains.

I love a life whose plot is simple.

I know of no redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved I fall back on to this ground.

As I love nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and summer and winter, I love thee, my Friend.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Simplify, simplify.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.

Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them - that it was a vain endeavor?

Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.

I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin.

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.

Between whom there is hearty truth there is love.

This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest posterity, content with slightly and religiously retouchingthe old material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity.

The whole body of what is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature are the purest morality.