3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

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

It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such.

Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.

Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice.

Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure

It's too late to be studying Hebrew; it's more important to understand even the slang of today.