Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

Only lovers know the value and magnanimity of truth.

There are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically opposite.

Stuff a cold and starve a cold are but two ways. They are the two practices, both always in full blast. Yet you must take the advice of the one school as if there was no other.

Your scheme must be the framework of the universe; all other schemes will soon be ruins.

Expect no trivial truth from me, unless I am on the witness- stand. I will come as near to lying as you can drive a coach and four.

There is none who does not lie hourly in the respect he pays to false appearance.

Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom everywhere.

If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends!

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.

I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks.

The object of love expands and grows before us to eternity, until it includes all that is lovely, and we become all that can love.

Love your life, poor as it is.

Love is the profoundest of secrets. Divulged, even to the beloved, it is no longer Love. As if it were merely I that loved you. When love ceases, then it is divulged.

Enemies publish themselves. They declare war. The friend never declares his love.

There must be the... generating force of Love behind every effort destined to be successful.

What avails it that another loves you, if he does not understand you? Such love is a curse.

We communicate like the burrows of foxes, in silence and darkness, under ground. We are undermined by faith and love.

I love the broad margin to my life.

Love does not analyze its object.

All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all.

What is the singing of birds, or any natural sound, compared with the voice of one we love.

There must be some nerve and heroism in our love, as of a winter morning.

We must love our friend so much that she shall be associated with our purest and holiest thoughts alone.

I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.