Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

About Henry David Thoreau:

Henry David Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Resistance to Civil Government (also known as Civil Disobedience), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Henry David Thoreau

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.

Henry David Thoreau

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

The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

Henry David Thoreau

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

Henry David Thoreau

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

Henry David Thoreau

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

Henry David Thoreau

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

Henry David Thoreau

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

Henry David Thoreau

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

Henry David Thoreau

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.

Henry David Thoreau

There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.

Henry David Thoreau

To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

Henry David Thoreau

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

Henry David Thoreau

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Henry David Thoreau

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

Henry David Thoreau

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Henry David Thoreau

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

Henry David Thoreau

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Henry David Thoreau

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

Henry David Thoreau

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

Henry David Thoreau

Author Bio

  • NameHenry David Thoreau
  • Description1817-1862 American author, abolitionist, naturalist
  • BornJuly 12, 1817
  • DiedMay 6, 1862
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Poet; Philosopher; Essayist; Autobiographer