3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Even in civilized communities, the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of development.

When we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.

Any man will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of; and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and classbooks, and when we leave school, the Little Reading, and story books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins.

I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter.

In the winter, warmth stands for all virtue.

The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.

The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.

No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant Southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.

Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th,1847.