3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild - not tamed and broken by society.

There must be the... generating force of Love behind every effort destined to be successful.

In the love of narrow souls I make many short voyages but in vain-I find no sea room-but in great souls I sail before the wind without a watch, and never reach the shore.

The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks where the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets.

Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours; and yet how long it stands in vain!... Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised.

A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their conscience also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part, and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.

It is very rare that you meet with obstacles in this world, which the humblest man has not faculties to surmount.

Do not despair of life. Think of the fox, prowling in a winter night to satisfy his hunger. His race survives; I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide.

I was born upon thy bank, river, My blood flows in thy stream, And thou meanderest forever, At the bottom of my dream.