3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some "Symmes' Hole" by which to get at the inside at last.

Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.

The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to look at. Why should it stand so high at the shoulders? Why have so long a head? Why have no tail to speak of?

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

A true politeness does not result from any hasty and artificial polishing, it is true, but grows naturally in characters of the right grain and quality, through a long fronting of men and events, and rubbing on good and bad fortune.

Every tree sends its fibres forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind.

How novel and original must be each new mans view of the universe - for though the world is so old - and so many books have been written - each object appears wholly undescribed to our experience - each field of thought wholly unexplored - the whole world is an America - a New World.

It takes two to speak truth -- one to speak, and another to hear.