3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

Associate reverently, as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.

I learned what it is to live in the open air, and I learned that our lives are domestic in more sense than we think.

I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society.

An island always pleases my imagination, even the smallest, as a small continent and integral portion of the globe. I have a fancyfor building my hut on one. Even a bare, grassy isle, which I can see entirely over at a glance, has some undefined and mysterious charm for me.

Surely joy is the condition of life.

I am from time to time congratulating myself on my general want of success as a lecturer; apparent want of success, but is it nota real triumph? I do my work clean as I go along, and they will not be likely to want me anywhere again. So there is no danger of my repeating myself, and getting to a barrel of sermons, which you must upset, and begin again with.

I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge.

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.