3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.

Time & Co. are, after all, the only quite honest and trustworthy publishers that we know.

The world rests on principles.

Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement; but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight.

The eye which can appreciate the naked and absolute beauty of a scientific truth is far more rare than that which is attracted by a moral one.

Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.

Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God.

The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands.

The journalists think that they cannot say too much in favor of such "improvements" in husbandry; it is a safe theme, like piety;but as for the beauty of one of these "model farms," I would as lief see a patent churn and a man turning it. They are, commonly, places merely where somebody is making money, it may be counterfeiting.