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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
Random Henry David Thoreau quote
284 quotes
Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
Journals (1838)
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Walden (1854)
The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass – I the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.
Walden (1854)
You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake; you must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand heap.
Journals (1838)
Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.
Odell Shepard (1961)
A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East.
Walking (1862)
The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.
Journals (1838)
Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.
Civil Disobedience (1849)
When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct.
Life Without Principle (1863)
The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented.
Walking (1862)
I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject.
Civil Disobedience (1849)
The vessel, though her masts be firm,
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
You must ascend a mountain to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body, for it is at home there, though you are not.
A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849)
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.
We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it.
Walden (1854)
The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one be a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live than other men? — if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle?
Life Without Principle (1863)
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