284 quotes
It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump.
A poem is one undivided unimpeded expression fallen ripe into literature, and it is undividedly and unimpededly received by those for whom it was matured.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
With his almost acid sharpness of insight, with his almost animal dexterity in act, there went none of that large, unconscious geniality of the world’s heroes.
A gun gives you the body, not the bird.
Fire is the most tolerable third party.
Journals (1838)
He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.
Civil Disobedience (1849)
Thus the state never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength.
Civil Disobedience (1849)
A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.
Civil Disobedience (1849)
There are various, nay, incredible faiths; why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable.
A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)
The rich man... is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.
Civil Disobedience (1849)
Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.
Civil Disobedience (1849)
It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers.
Life Without Principle (1863)
In the Catholic Church, especially, they go into chancery, make a clean confession, give up all, and think to start again. Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.
Life Without Principle (1863)
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 savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
Walden (1854)
Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to look at. Why should it stand so high at the shoulders? Why have so long a head?
How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answered that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.
Civil Disobedience (1849)
The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.
Civil Disobedience (1849)
Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction,—a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse.