Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

Morning brings back the heroic ages.

I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.

De la literatura sólo nos atrae lo salvaje. El aburrimiento no es sino otro nombre para lo domesticado.

But worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself

Notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy—chaff which I find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but for which I am as sorry as any man—I will breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is such a relief to both the moral and physical system; and I am resolved that I will not through humility become the devil's attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word for the truth.

Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine.

The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but it is instinct.

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

Not that food which entereth into the moth defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten. It is neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors; when that which is eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual life, but food for the worms that possess us.

I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up.

The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated.

I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.

They make their pride, he said, in making their dinner cost much; I make my pride in making my dinner cost little. When asked at table what dish he preferred, he answered, The nearest.

Our life is frittered away by detail.

Ich ging in die Wälder, weil ich bewusst leben wollte. Ich wollte das Dasein auskosten. Ich wollte das Mark des Lebens einsaugen! Und alles fortwerfen, das kein Leben barg, um nicht an meinem Todestag Innezuwerden, daß ich nie gelebt hatte.

Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.

I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.

Never trust any thought arrived at sitting down.

The seasons and all their changes are in me.

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied by a chance bond together.

How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?

A puritan may go to his brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle. Not that food which entereth into the mouth defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten. It is neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors;

It is not my business to be petitioning the Governor or the Legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and if they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way: its very Constitution is the evil. This

Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them.