3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

If I deny the authority of the State when it presents my tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard, this makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects.

We have used up all our inherited freedom, like the young bird the albumen in the egg. It is not an era of repose. If we would save our lives, we must fight for them.

Education makes a straight ditch of a free meandering brook.

I am resolved that I will not through humility become the devil's attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word for the truth.

The pleasures of the intellect are permanent, the pleasures of the heart are transitory.

We begin to praise when we begin to see a thing needs our assistance.

We are all of us Apollos serving some Admetus.

I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me.

I confess I was surprised to find that so many men spent their whole day, ay, their whole lives almost, a-fishing. It is remarkable what a serious business men make of getting their dinners, and how universally shiftlessness and a groveling taste take refuge in a merely ant-like industry. Better go without your dinner, I thought, than be thus everlastingly fishing for it like a cormorant. Of course, viewed from the shore, our pursuits in the country appear not a whit less frivolous.