3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality.

Man is but the place where I stand ...

We are apt to imagine that this hubbub of Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlors, vibrates through the universe, and is as catholic a sound as the creaking of the earth's axle. But if a man sleeps soundly, he will forget it all between sunset and dawn.

Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, seewhat isbefore you, and walkon intofuturity.

It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.

Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.

The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest.

It would be worth the while to select our reading, for books are the society we keep; to read only the serenely true; never statistics, nor fiction, nor news, nor reports, nor periodicals, but only great poems, and when they failed, read them again, or perchance write more. Instead of other sacrifice, we might offer up our perfect (teleia) thoughts to the gods daily, in hymns or psalms. For we should be at the helm at least once a day.

Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.