3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!

I had but three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship; three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up.

Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption.

In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin.

Every day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half an hour, in such lights as the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn, and the curtain falls. And then the sun goes down, and long the afterglow gives light.

Man emulates earth Earth emulates heaven Heaven emulates the Way The way emulates nature.

It's only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to God.

How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins.

No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?