3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

The virtue which we appreciate, we to some extent appropriate.

Let a slight snow come and cover the earth, and the tracks of men will show how little the woods and fields are frequented.

You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you.

At death our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart farther from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death.

Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.... What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?

Shall a man not have his spring as well as the plants?

Nature is fair in proportion as the youth is pure. The heavens and the earth are one flower ; the earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla.

The newspaper is a Bible which we read every morning and every afternoon, standing and sitting, riding and walking. It is a Biblewhich every man carries in his pocket, which lies on every table and counter, and which the mail, and thousands of missionaries, are continually dispersing. It is, in short, the only book which America has printed, and which America reads. So wide is its influence.

I lived in Judea eighteen hundred years ago, but I never knew that there was such a one as Christ among my contemporaries.