3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.

We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defenses only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free.

Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead but a living stream, though it has less life within its waters and on its banks. It has a swift current, and, in this part of its course, a clayey bottom, almost no weeds, and comparatively few fishes.

Your religion is where your love is.

In 1848, Thoreau went to jail for refusing, as a protest against the Mexican war, to pay his poll tax. When RW Emerson came to bail him out, Emerson said, 'Henry, what are you doing in there?' Thoreau quietly replied, 'Ralph, what are you doing out there?'

Be not simply good - be good for something.

No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all.

It is not enough that our life is an easy one. We must live on the stretch, retiring to our rest like soldiers on the eve of a battle, looking forward to the strenuous sortie of the morrow.

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.