Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

Say what you have to say, not what you ought.

What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

We go eastward to realize history, and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The Atlantic is a Lethan stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its institutions.

I am of the nature of Stone. It takes the summer's sun to warm it.

It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!

The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.

In Literature it is only the wild that attracts us.

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands.

Old trees are our parents, and our parents' parents, perchance. If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others.

The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor.

There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

I was never molested by any person but those who represented the State.

It is to be remembered that by good deeds or words you encourage yourself, who always have need to witness or hear them.

A single farm-house which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the dominions of the King of Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of harmony discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle of ten miles' radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the threescore years and ten of human life. It will never become quite familiar to you.

Raste an vielen Bächen, an vielen Herdfeuern, und mache dir keine Sorgen. Gedenke deines Schöpfers in deiner Jugend. Erhebe dich, ehe der Morgen dämmert, sei unbekümmert und ziehe auf Abenteuer! Möge der Mittag dich auch an anderen Gewässern finden oder die Nacht dich überraschen, du bist überall zu Hause.

At present men make shift to wear what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, they put on what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance, whether of space or time, laugh at each other's masquerade.

Morgenluft! Wenn die Menschen von ihr nicht an der Quelle des Tages trinken wollen, werden wir ein wenig von ihr auf Flaschen füllen müssen und sie in den Läden verkaufen, zum Wohle derer, die ihr Rezept für Morgenstunden in dieser Welt verloren haben.

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal—that is your success. All

men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.

It is so much pleasanter and wholesomer to be warmed by the sun while you can be, than by an artificial fire.

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 walk out into a Nature such as the old prophets and poets, Manu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, but it is not America: neither Americus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer account of it in mythology than in any history of America, so called, that I have seen.