3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

To affect the quality of the day - that is the highest of the arts.

Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them? that it was a vain endeavor?

The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly.

En tuant le temps on blesse l’éternité.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Henry David Thoreau

Nov. 2, 1837. Truth strikes us from behind, and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.

Yo creo que no hay nada, ni tan siquiera el crimen, más opuesto a la poesía, a la filosofía, a la vida misma, que este incesante trabajar.

Si un hombre pasea por el bosque por placer todos los días, corre el riesgo de que le tomen por un haragán, pero si dedica el día entero a especular cortando bosques y dejando la tierra árida antes de tiempo, se le estima por ser un ciudadano trabajador y emprendedor. ¡Como si una ciudad no tuviera más interés en sus bosques que el de talarlos!

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.