Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made.

It would be well, perhaps, if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long. Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility.

I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I. They force me to become like themselves. I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live? When I meet a government which says to me, Your money or your life, why should I be in haste to give it my money?

The more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think the same is true of human beings.

It is the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher's desk.

The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

The purity men love is like the mists which envelop the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond.

There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon—said Damodara, when his herds required new and larger pastures.

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

A journal is a record of experiences and growth, not a preserve of things well done or said.

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves.

The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read the.

One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.

Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even to most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.

If a man who has no property refuses but once to earn nine shillings for the State, he is put in prison for a period unlimited by any law that I know, and determined only by the discretion of those who put him there; but if he should steal ninety times nine shillings from the State, he is soon permitted to go at large again.

The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do...How vigilant we are! determined not live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties.