Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.

The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea.

A bore is someone who takes away my solitude and doesn't give me companionship in return

Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit until we have so conducted that we feel like new men in the old.

Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone? We

Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit comfortably on your shoulder.

It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it.

We are a race of tit-men...

The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.

After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what—how—when—where? But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips. I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight.

for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly;

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.

Cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off.

By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down.

La loi n'a jamais rendu les hommes plus justes d'un iota ; et, à cause du respect qu'ils lui marquent, les êtres bien disposés eux-même deviennent les agents de l'injustice.

I was determined to know beans.

It is a very remarkable and significant fact that though no man is quite well or healthy yet every one believes practically that health is the rule & disease the exception.

We commonly do not remember that it is … always the first person that is speaking.

Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it.

We should be men first, and subjects afterward.