Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

Quelle flamme pourrait égaler le rayon de soleil d'un jour d'hiver ?

If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.

The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering from want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.

That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe—That government is best which governs not at all; and

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind.

No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet 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.

All change is a miracle to contemplate;

Hard and steady and engrossing labor with the hands, especially out of doors, is invaluable to the literary man and serves him directly.

I saw it throwing off its nightly clothing of mist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface was revealed.

I was always conscious of sounds in nature which my ears could never hear,—that I caught but the prelude to a strain. She always retreats as I advance. Away behind and behind is she and her meaning. Will not this faith and expectation make to itself ears at length?

Is not the poet bound to write his own biography? Is there any other work for him but a good journal? We do not wish to know how his imaginary hero, but how he, the actual hero, lived from day to day.

Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here.

Even poetry, you know, is in one sense an infinite brag & exaggeration.

A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of today is present, so some flitting perspectives and demi-experiences of the life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside to time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise...

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I

If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life.

Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me.

If we would aim at perfection in any thing, simplicity must not be overlooked.

When the far mountains are invisible, the near ones look the higher.

What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.

Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.