Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

Today you may write a chapter on the advantages of travelling & tomorrow you may write another chapter on the advantages of not travelling.

He teaches how to void excrement and urine and the like, elevating what is mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by calling these things trifles.

The sun is but a morning star.

Ce qu'un homme pense de lui-même, voilà ce qui règle ou plutôt indique son destin.

It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.

Our thoughts are the epochs in our lives, all else is but as a journal of the winds that blew while we were here.

I foresee, that, if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery.

Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.

How meanly and miserably we live for the most part! We escape fate continually by the skin of our teeth, as the saying is. We are practically desperate. What kind of gift is life unless we have spirits to enjoy it and taste its true flavor?

Wherever men have lived there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether it is interesting or not.

It enriches us infinitely to recognize greater qualities than we possess in another.

Simply to see to a distant horizon through a clear air,—the fine outline of a distant hill or a blue mountain-top through some new vista,—this is wealth enough for one afternoon.

I sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this;— who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon.

I 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.

We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. We must make root, send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day. I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I open my mouth to the wind. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always. Every house is in this sense a hospital.

All true greatness runs as level a course, and is as unaspiring, as the plow in the furrow. It wears the homeliest dress and speaks the homeliest language

It is because the children of the empire were not suckled by wolves that they were conquered & displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.

We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

By the mood of my mind, I suddenly felt dissuaded from continuing my walk, but I observed at the same instant that the shadow of a cloud was passing over the spot on which I stood, though it was of small extent, which, if it had no connection with my mood, at any rate suggested how transient and little to be regarded that mood was.

I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day;…so simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real.

Mais que sont-ils? Des hommes, vraiment? ou bien de petites forteresses et de petits arsenaux mobiles, au service de quelque homme de pouvoir sans scrupule? Visitez la Base navale de Washington, et regardez un soldat: voilà le genre d'homme qu'un gouvernement américain a le pouvoir de créer, ou ce qu'un gouvernement américain peut faire d'un homme avec sa magie noire - à peine une ombre, à peine un souvenir de ce qu'est l'humanité [...] P.8

Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.

The false society of men— —for earthly greatness All heavenly comforts rarefies to air.

In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven.