Home › Authors › Henry David Thoreau
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
Random Henry David Thoreau quote
284 quotes
Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves.
Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.
I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
Life Without Principle (1863)
And now, at half-past ten o'clock, I hear the cockerels crow in Hubbard's barns, and morning is already anticipated. It is the feathered, wakeful thought in us that anticipates the following day.
Journals (1838)
I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?
A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)
I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison... the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.
Civil Disobedience (1849)
A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread.
As far back as I can remember I have unconsciously referred to the experiences of a previous state of existence.
My life has been the poem I would have writ,
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice?
Life Without Principle (1863)
Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.
Walden (1854)
A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be “clay.”
It takes two to speak the truth, — one to speak, and another to hear.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.
This world is but canvas to our imaginations.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
My life is like a stroll upon the beach.
Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate oddfellow society.
Walden (1854)
We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up.
Life Without Principle (1863)
Topics Henry David Thoreau is quoted on
Works