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Henry David Thoreau quotes
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(80)
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“The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“That government is best which governs least”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Civil Disobedience
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“men have become the tools of their tools.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“We should be men first, and subjects afterward.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Civil Disobedience
“If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Civil Disobedience
“I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“the man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Civil Disobedience
“I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Civil Disobedience
“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Civil Disobedience
“I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“It is never too late to give up our prejudices.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Civil Disobedience
“To be awake is to be alive.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Civil Disobedience
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“Things do not change; we change.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Civil Disobedience
“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“Our life is frittered away by detail.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Civil Disobedience
“We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact...”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Civil Disobedience
“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Civil Disobedience
“Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Civil Disobedience
“All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Civil Disobedience
“There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Civil Disobedience
“I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
“There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Civil Disobedience
“I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
“True, there never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.”
Henry David Thoreau
,
Walden
view all 80 quotes
Related topics
individuality
nature
solitude
life
government
truth
change
dreams
justice
simplicity
self
power
freedom
evil
good
society
respect
individualism
wealth
democracy
Related sources
Walden
(51)
Civil Disobedience
(22)
Life Without Principle
(2)
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
(4)
Walking
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