3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

We should seek to be fellow students with the pupil, and should learn of, as well as with him, if we would be most helpful to him.

It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals.

He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair.

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and mean.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

[Man] needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalized

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.

Every blade in the field - Every leaf in the forest - lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up.