Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

Farewell, my friends, my path inclines to this side the mountain, yours to that. We are no longer the representatives of our former selves.

not sit while the wind went by. Is the literary man to live always or chiefly sitting in a chamber through which nature enters by a window only? What is the use of the summer?

The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard.

Man needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalized.

We are more of the earth, Farther from heaven these days.

There's no new news, just old news with new dates.

One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors.

This [...] government [...] has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man cam bend it to his will.

Some are 'industrious' and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such I have at present nothing to say.

I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized.

Der Mensch behauptet, viel zu wissen; Doch seht nur, wie sie überschießen, Die Künste und die Wissenschaften, Die tausend Errungenschaften; Der Wind, der weht, Ist alles, was er versteht.

If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events that make the news transpire- thinner than the paper on which it is printed- then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them. Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever.