3,409 Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. We do not care for the Bible, but we do care for the newspaper.At any meeting of politicianshow impertinent it would be to quote from the Bible! how pertinent to quote from a newspaper or from the Constitution!

The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.

If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point.

Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across lots.

The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever!

Give me a sentence which no intelligence can understand. There must be a kind of life and palpitation to it, and under its words akind of blood must circulate forever.

The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.

Truth is always paradoxical.

What recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. It does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter.