HENRY DAVID THOREAU QUOTES
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Things do not change; we change.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Walden
In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Familiar Letters
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Journal
Early in the morning, while all things are crisp with frost, men come with fishing-reels and slender lunch, and let down their fine lines through the snowy field to take pickerel and perch; wild men, who instinctively follow other fashions and trust other authorities than their townsmen, and by their goings and comings stitch towns together in parts where else they would be ripped. They sit and eat their luncheon in stout fear-naughts on the dry oak leaves on the shore, as wise in natural lore as the citizen is in artificial.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Walden
Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Walden
Even the utmost good-will and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. We do not wish for Friends to feed and clothe our bodies--neighbors are kind enough for that--but to do the like office to our spirits.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Friendship
Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervis in the desert.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau
All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Civil Disobedience
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, Walden
Even the utmost good-will and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. We do not wish for Friends to feed and clothe our bodies--neighbors are kind enough for that--but to do the like office to our spirits.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Friendship
The language of Friendship is not words but meanings.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Friendship
Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Walden
When we are in health, all sounds fife and drum for us; we hear the notes of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the dawn.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
I do not believe in lawyers, in that mode of attacking or defending a man, because you descend to meet the judge on his own ground, and, in cases of the highest importance, it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a human law or not. Let lawyers decide trivial cases.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, "A Plea for Captain John Brown"
They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Walden
Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone.... I never yet met with, or heard of, a judge who was not a slave of this kind, and so the finest and most unfailing weapon of injustice. He fetches a slightly higher price than the black men only because he is a more valuable slave.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, journal, Dec. 4, 1860
Of what use the friendliest disposition even, if there are no hours given to Friendship, if it is forever postponed to unimportant duties and relations? Friendship first, Friendship last.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Friendship
The Friend does not count his Friends on his fingers; they are not numerable.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Friendship
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 with the more civilized.
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
Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, "Resistance to Civil Government"
The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau
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