3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

The poet is blithe and cheery ever, and as well as nature.

My friend is one who takes me for what I am. A stranger takes me for something else than what I am. . . . What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm. It brings men together in crowds and mobs in bar-rooms and elsewhere, but it does not deserve the name of virtue.

When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, [I] submit myself to my instinct to decide for me.

A journal, is a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy, what you are grateful for.

Birds never sing in caves.

Maturity is when all of your mirrors turn into windows.

What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?

For a companion, I require one who will make an equal demand on me with my own genius. Such a one will always be rightly tolerant.It is suicide, and corrupts good manners, to welcome any less than this. I value and trust those who love and praise my aspiration rather than my performance. If you would not stop to look at me, but look whither I am looking, and farther, then my education could not dispense with your company.

Exaggerated history is poetry, and truth referred to a new standard.