3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Si tenéis alguna empresa ante vosotros, tratad de hacerla con las ropas viejas. A los hombres les hace falta, no algo con lo que hacer, sino algo que hacer, o mejor, algo que ser. Tal vez no deberíamos procurarnos un traje nuevo, por harapiento y sucio que esté el viejo, hasta no habernos conducido, empeñado o embarcado de tal modo que podamos sentirnos hombres nuevos en el viejo.

A man can suffocate on courtesy.

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out… but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

I was never molested by any person but those who represented the State.

One chair for solitude, two for friendship, and three for society.

The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times

For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

The true and not despairing Friend will address his Friend in some such terms as these."I never asked thy leave to let me love thee,--I have a right. I love thee not as something private and personal, which is your own, but as something universal and worthy of love, which I have found. O, how I think of you! You are purely good, --you are infinitely good. I can trust you forever. I did not think that humanity was so rich. Give me an opportunity to live.