Quotes By Henry David Thoreau

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.

Simplify, simplify.

Men have become the tools of their tools.

What is once well done is done forever.

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

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.

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

That government is best which governs least.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.