3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concretic layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society...may unexpectedly come forth...to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!...Such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn...Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

The best poets, after all, exhibit only a tame and civil side of nature. They have not seen the west side of any mountain.

Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs.

It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live.

I do not know what right I have to so much happiness, but rather hold it in reserve till the time of my desert.

The poet is he who can write some pure mythology today without the aid of posterity.

The value of any experience is measured, of course, not by the amount of money, but the amount of development we get out of it.

Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.

They who assert the purest right, and consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt State, commonly have not spent much time accumulating property. The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; and it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it.