Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.

The fault-finder will find fault even in paradise.

Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state...

There is more day left to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob, before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.

Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.

The Harivansa says, An abode without birds is like a meat without seasoning. Such was not my abode, for I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them.

Let not to get a living be thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but own it not. Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs.

As with our colleges, so with a hundred 'modern improvements;' there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at...

The thoughtful man becomes a hermit in the thoroughfares of the marketplace.

Confucious said, To know what we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way...But lo! men have become the tools of their tools...We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb.

A traveller! I love his title. A traveler is to be reverenced as such. His profession is the best symbol of our life. Going from–toward; it is the history of every one of us.

This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night.

There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness.

Those who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts.

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

If I should sell my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for.

Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.

With what infinite & unwearied expectation and proclamations the cocks usher in every dawn, as if there had never been one before.

Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to the other