3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

The traveler must be born again on the road, and earn a passport from the elements.

Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been inconceivably near to it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a vaster receding thought.

Don't get to the end of your life and realize you have never lived.

Asked whether or not he believed in an afterlife, Thoreau quipped, "One world at a time."

I love a life whose plot is simple.

Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always. Every house is, in this sense, a hospital.

If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.

Men talk of freedom! How many are free to think? Free from fear, from perturbation, from prejudice? Nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand are perfect slaves.

That we have but little faith is not sad, but that we have little faithfulness. By faithfulness faith is earned.