Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

Una Minoranza che si conformi alla maggioranza è senza forza, non è neppure più una minoranza; ma diventa irresistibile quando si oppone con tutto il suo peso.

Ma il ricco [...] è sempre colluso con l'istituzione che lo fa ricco. In termini assoluti, più soldi corrispondono a minor virtù, poiché il denaro si insinua tra l'uomo e i suoi obbiettivi e glieli ottiene, però a scapito della sua onestà.

Foolish people imagine that what they imagine is somewhere else. That stuff is not made in any factory but their own.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.

dopotutto non erano tanto nobili, ma trattavano il ladro nella stessa maniera in cui il ladro li trattava.

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.

When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men- those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.

We shall see but little if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

All perception of truth is the detection of analogy; we reason from our hands to our head.

Many times I thought that if the particular tree, commonly an elm, under which I was walking or riding were the only one like it in the country, it would be worth a journey across the continent to see it.

Perhaps this was the first instance of that quiet way of speaking for a place not yet occupied, or at least not improved as much as it may be, which their descendants have practised, and are still practising so extensively. Not Any seems to have been the sole proprietor of all America before the Yankees [...] At any rate, I know that if you hold a thing unjustly, there will surely be the devil to pay at last.

We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agri-culture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten.

There is no more Herculean task than to think a thought about this life and then get it expressed.

It is in vain to write on the seasons unless you have the seasons in you.

I have known such joys the likes of which might have inspired a Homer or a Shakespeare.

heartily accept the motto, 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 when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever. But we love better to talk about it: that we say is our mission. Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man.

My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas in nature.

If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself.

I take all these walks to every point of the compass, and it is always harvest-time with me. I am always gathering my crop from these woods and fields and waters, and no man is in my way or interferes with me. My crop is not their crop. I am not gathering beans and corn. Do they think there are no fruits but such as these?

Nowadays, men wear a fool's-cap, and call it a liberty-cap. I do not know but there are some who, if they were tied to a whipping-post, and could but get one hand free, would use it to ring the bells and fire the cannons to celebrate THEIR liberty. So some of my townsmen took the liberty to ring and fire. That was the extent of their freedom; and when the sound of the bells died away, their liberty died away also; when the powder was all expended, their liberty went off with the smoke.

Is not this the broad earth still?

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. I

Again, I sometimes say to myself, When many millions of men, without heat, without ill will, without personal feelings of any kind, demand of you a few shillings only, without the possibility, such is their constitution, of retracting or altering their present demand, and without the possibility, on your side, of appeal to any other millions, why expose yourself to this overwhelming brute force?