Quotes from Henry David Thoreau
I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.
- Henry David Thoreau
Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.
- Henry David Thoreau
Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
- Henry David Thoreau
The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the character of individuals.
- Henry David Thoreau
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
- Henry David Thoreau
Love must be as much a light as a flame.
- Henry David Thoreau
Little is to be expected of that day... to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly-acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells...
- Henry David Thoreau
After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or its organs, rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries again what noble life it can make.
- Henry David Thoreau
To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning... Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me... To be awake is to be alive.
- Henry David Thoreau
[Silence] is when we hear inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly.
- Henry David Thoreau
There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.
- Henry David Thoreau
As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos...
- Henry David Thoreau