3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails.

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep.

If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui.

In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as the Iliad.

Death is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident. It is as common as life.

If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for maltreating the face of nature committed to their care.

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

There should always be some flowering and maturing of the fruits of nature in the cooking process.