3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

As for Doing-good...I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands.

Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.

In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial. It is not neccessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.

Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted or enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.

It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience. But a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.

The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed

Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death