Quotes from Henry David Thoreau
What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is.
- Henry David Thoreau
Men cannot conceive of a state of things so fair that it cannot be realized.
- Henry David Thoreau
To say that God has given a man many and great talents frequently means that he has brought his heavens down within reach of his hands.
- Henry David Thoreau
The greater number of men are merely corporals.
- Henry David Thoreau
The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wished to see himself.
- Henry David Thoreau
He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruit of his riches, who summer and winter forever can find delight in his own thoughts.
- Henry David Thoreau
The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.
- Henry David Thoreau
It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so.
- Henry David Thoreau
I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society.
- Henry David Thoreau
When a man's conscience and the laws clash, it is his conscience that he must follow.
- Henry David Thoreau
Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmie that he can? Let everyone mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made
- Henry David Thoreau
A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature by being buried in it.
- Henry David Thoreau