3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

When my legs begin to move, the thoughts begin to flow.

The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!

We slander the hyena; man is the fiercest and cruelest animal.

There is, however, this consolation to the most way-worn traveler, upon the dustiest road, that the path his feet describe is so perfectly symbolical of human life,--now climbing the hills, now descending into the vales. From the summits he beholds the heavens and the horizon, from the vales he looks up to the heights again. He is treading his old lessons still, and though he may be very weary and travel-worn, it is yet sincere experience.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

The dry grasses are not dead for me. A beautiful form has as much life at one season as another.

I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their cud, and their lives of course yielded no milk.