3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

To a small man every greater is an exaggeration.

I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.

Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.

The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears to hear it.

What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties!

It is not when I am going to meet him, but when I am just turning away and leaving him alone, that I discover what God is. I say, God. I am not sure that that is the name. You will know what I mean.

We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always.

A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.

All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.