3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

No man has ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his cloths; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience

Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.

So far as inland discovery was concerned, the adventurous spirit of the English was that of sailors who land but for a day, and their enterprise the enterprise of traders.

And by another year, Such as God knows, with freer air, More fruits and fairer flowers Will bear, While I droop here.

We never conceive the greatness of our fates.

A man may grow rich in Turkey even, if he will be in all respects a good subject of the Turkish government.

I have great faith in a seed.

As a preacher, I should be prompted to tell men, not so much how to get their wheat bread cheaper, as of the bread of life compared with which that is bran. Let a man only taste these loaves, and he becomes a skillful economist at once.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.