Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do. It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course.

A wise man has doubts even in his best moments. Real truth is always accompanied by hesitations. If I could not hesitate, I could not believe.

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied By a chance bond together, Dangling this way and that, their links Were made so loose and wide, Methinks, For milder weather.

millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

My soul and body have tottered along together of late, tripping and hindering one another like unpracticed Siamese twins.

We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows.

This shall be the test of innocence—if I can hear a taunt, and look out on this friendly moon, pacing the heavens in queen-like majesty, with the accustomed yearning.

Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.

When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them--as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon--I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.

Celui qui ne résiste pas ne sera jamais vaincu.

The world is but a canvas to our imagination

I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets, Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in.

If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime.

Cuán vano es sentarse a escribir cuando aún no te has parado para vivir.

Have you got in your wood for this winter? What else have you got in? Of what use a great fire on the hearth, and a confounded little fire in the heart?

One who has just come from reading perhaps one of the best English books will find how many with whom he can converse about it? Or suppose he comes from reading a Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose praises are familiar even to the so-called illiterate; he will find nobody at all to speak to, but must keep silence about it.

Books which are books are all that you want, and there are but half a dozen in any thousand.

si elle (la loi) est d'une telle nature qu'elle fasse de vous l'agent de l'injustice vis-à-vis d'autrui alors je déclare qu'il faut enfreindre la loi

As if there were safety in stupidity alone.

La seule obligation que j'aie le droit d'adopter, c'est d'agir à tout moment selon ce qui me paraît juste.

la raison pratique pour laquelle, une fois le pouvoir échu aux mains du peuple, une majorité reçoit la permission de régner, et continue de la détenir pour une longue période, ce n'est pas parce qu'elle court plus de risques d'avoir raison, ni parce que cela semble plus juste à la majorité, mais parce qu'elle est physiquement la plus forte.

Le meilleur gouvernement est celui qui ne gouverne pas du tout; et quand les hommes y seront prêts, tel sera le genres de gouvernement qu'ils auront. Un gouvernement, au mieux, n'est qu'un expédient ; mais la plupart d'entre eux sont d'habitude, et tous les gouvernements sont quelquefois nuisibles.

The life which society proposes to me to live is so artificial and complex—bolstered up on many weak supports, and sure to topple down at last—that no man surely can ever be inspired to live it.