284 quotes
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
Journals (1838)
Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.
Journals (1838)
It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.
Life Without Principle (1863)
None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.
Walden (1854)
You come from attending the funeral of mankind to attend to a natural phenomenon. A little thought is sexton to all the world.
Life Without Principle (1863)
Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.
Civil Disobedience (1849)
Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.
Life Without Principle (1863)
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it.
Journals (1838)
Any fool can make a rule
And every fool will mind it.
Journals (1838)
The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
Journals (1838)
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.
Walden (1854)
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
Walden (1854)
The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.
Slavery in Massachusetts (1854)
Poetry — No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself.
Journals (1838)
I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.
Life Without Principle (1863)
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
Journals (1838)
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
Walden (1854)
You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought.
Journals (1838)
An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not.
Life Without Principle (1863)