3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.

How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.

When I would go a-visiting, I find that I go off the fashionable street,--not being inclined to change my dress,--to where man meets man, and not polished shoe meets shoe.

The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes.

What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.

We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return - sending back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms.

The first pleasant days of spring come out like a squirrel and go in again.

You think that I am impoverishing myself withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web or chrysalis, and, nymph-like, shall ere long burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted for a higher society.

When a soldier is hit by a cannonball, rags are as becoming as purple.