3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.

A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him.

Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns.

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left.

Letter-writing too often degenerates into a communicating of facts, and not of truths; of other men's deeds and not our thoughts.What are the convulsions of a planet, compared with the emotions of the soul? or the rising of a thousand suns, if that is not enlightened by a ray?

How can he remember well his ignorance - which his growth requires - who has so often to use his knowledge?

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. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving.

In ancient days the Pythagoreans were used to change names with each other,--fancying that each would share the virtues they admired in the other.

I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching-thang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again."