Quotes from Henry David Thoreau
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
- Henry David Thoreau
It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. …We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them.
- Henry David Thoreau
This curious world we inhabit is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.
- Henry David Thoreau
It is desirable that a man live in all respects so simply and preparedly that if an enemy take the town... he can walk out the gate empty-handed and without anxiety.
- Henry David Thoreau
Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity.
- Henry David Thoreau
If you want to be happy, be!
- Henry David Thoreau
The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in a single, solitary, even humble individual. For it is within the soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.
- Henry David Thoreau
I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.
- Henry David Thoreau
The only remedy for love is to love more.
- Henry David Thoreau
Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.
- Henry David Thoreau
I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?
- Henry David Thoreau
Love must be as much a light as it is a flame.
- Henry David Thoreau