3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel.

As for conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that. Let not your right hand know what your left hand does in that line of business. It will prove a failure.... It is a greater strain than any soul can long endure. When you get God to pulling one way, and the devil the other, each having his feet well braced,--to say nothing of the conscience sawing transversely,--almost any timber will give way.

Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits.

Some have asked if the stock of men could not be improved,--if they could not be bred as cattle. Let Love be purified, and all therest will follow. A pure love is thus, indeed, the panacea for all the ills of the world.

In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke their tender limbs.

Life is so short that it is not wise to take roundabout ways, nor can we spend much time in waiting.... We have not got half-way to dawn yet.

It is the stars as not yet known to science that I would know, the stars which the lonely traveler knows.

Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields andwoods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be coldand hungry and weary.

I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust,... confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of,--sitting there now at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o'clock in the morning.