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Henry David Thoreau Quotes
1817–1862 United States
Henry David Thoreau (12 July 1817 – 6 May 1862) was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. A leading transcendentalist, 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.
United States 19th-century poets Anarchists Critics Educators Also known as: Henry Thoreau, Thoreau, Thoreau, Henry David
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284 quotes
To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse.
Life Without Principle (1863)
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
Journals (1838)
Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable.
Journals (1838)
Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.
An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
Journals (1838)
The perception of beauty is a moral test.
Journals (1838)
That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess.
Journals (1838)
Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.
It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.
Life Without Principle (1863)
Those services which the community will most readily pay for it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man.
Life Without Principle (1863)
Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it. If he had known so much as this, he would never have earned it.
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.
If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him ... he will be surrounded by grandeur.
The life that I aspire to live
When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?
The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior.
Walden (1854)
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
Civil Disobedience (1849)
Men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.
Walden (1854)
You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
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