3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

The vessel, though her masts be firm,Beneath her copper bears a worm.

Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.

English sense has toiled, but Hindoo wisdom never perspired.

The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.

It is not worth while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.

As in many countries precious metals belong to the crown, so here more precious natural objects of rare beauty should belong to the public.

But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not adistance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us to forget that the sun shone,--nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon.

It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.