Quotes from Henry David Thoreau
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats.
- Henry David Thoreau
To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come.
- Henry David Thoreau
If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement.
- Henry David Thoreau
Confucius said, To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
- Henry David Thoreau
A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent lyres are struck.
- Henry David Thoreau
When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
- Henry David Thoreau
Men have become the tools of their tools.
- Henry David Thoreau
Blue is light seen through a veil.
- Henry David Thoreau
Direct your eye right inward, and you'll find A thousand regions in your mind Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be expert in home-cosmography.
- Henry David Thoreau
No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital in this profession. It comes only by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker. You must be born into the
- Henry David Thoreau
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
- Henry David Thoreau
If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!
- Henry David Thoreau