3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

It is desirable that a man live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that if an enemy take the town. He can walk out the gate empty handed and without anxiety.

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and Spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature, if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you, know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus you may feel your pulse.

There are two seasons when the leaves are in their glory, their green and perfect youth in June, and this their ripe old age.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

I am still a learner, not a teacher, feeding somewhat omnivorously, browsing both stalk and leaves.

The reader is nowhere raised into and sustained in a bigger, purer or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagavad-Gita. The Gita's sanity and sublimity have impressed the minds of even soldiers and merchants.

If not good, why then evil, / If not good god, good devil. / Goodness! you hypocrite, come out of that, / Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.

Daydream If you have built castles in the air, that is where they should be; now put foundations under them.

How few are aware that in winter, when the earth is covered with snow and ice...the sunset is double. The winter is coming when I shall walk the sky.