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

A man thinking or working will always be alone, let him be where he will.

Henry David Thoreau

Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other.We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that musty old cheese that we are. We have had to agree...

Henry David Thoreau

The true price of anything you do is the amount of time you exchange for it.

Henry David Thoreau

The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The tru...

Henry David Thoreau

I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.

Henry David Thoreau

What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?

Henry David Thoreau

The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.

Henry David Thoreau

Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.

Henry David Thoreau

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Henry David Thoreau

I was once reproved by a minister who was driving a poor beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds among the hills of New Hampshire, because I was bending my steps to a mountain-top on the Sabbath, instead of a church, when I would have gone farther th...

Henry David Thoreau

The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the barking of a dog, produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. It depends on your appetite for sound. Just as a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than confectionery to a ...

Henry David Thoreau

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

Henry David Thoreau

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Henry David Thoreau

There is on the earth no institution which Friendship has established; it is not taught by any religion; no scripture contains its maxims. It has no temple nor even a solitary column...However, out fates at least are social. Our courses do not diverg...

Henry David Thoreau

We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathoma...

Henry David Thoreau

The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular figure which this generation requires to-day. The manufacturers have learned that this ta...

Henry David Thoreau

I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors, and men who are politicians by profession; but I think, what is it to any independent, intellegent, and res...

Henry David Thoreau

Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

Henry David Thoreau

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

Henry David Thoreau

This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will h...

Henry David Thoreau

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.

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