Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Faith
We live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Respect, Respectability
Music is perpetual, and only the hearing is intermittent.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Music
I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Mind, Now, Gold
That government is best which governs least.
—Henry David Thoreau
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Books
On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Grief, Bereavement, Grieving
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Government, Prison
Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Experience
You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.
—Henry David Thoreau
One man lies in his work, and gets a bad reputation; another in his manners, and enjoys a good one.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Lies
As to conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I have not a very high opinion of that course.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Conformity
We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Faith, Belief
Gnaw your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, gnaw it still.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Endurance, Perseverance, Resolve
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
—Henry David Thoreau
Routine is a ground to stand on, a wall to retreat to; we cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against it.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Order
Birds never sing in caves.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Sin
Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Aspirations, Goals, Helping
Our thoughts are epochs in our lives; all else is but as a journal of the winds that blow while we are here.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Thought
Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly toward an object, and in no measure obtained it? If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them-that it was a vain endeavor?
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Doing Your Best, Desire, Goals, Desires
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
—Henry David Thoreau
Heaven is under our feet, as well as over our heads.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Attitude, Heaven
Being is the great explainer.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Existence
Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Farming
We hate the kindness which we understand.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Kindness
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
—Henry David Thoreau
Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Society
The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Character, Integrity
I heartily accept the motto,—“That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,—“That government is best which governs not at all” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.
—Henry David Thoreau
When the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea? O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.
—Henry David Thoreau
Topics: Imagination
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Ralph Waldo Emerson American Philosopher
- Amos Bronson Alcott American Teacher
- Mortimer J. Adler American Philosopher, Educator
- John Cage American Composer
- Charles Sanders Peirce American Philosopher
- Walt Whitman American Poet
- Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
- Kahlil Gibran Lebanese-born American Philosopher
- Will Durant American Historian, Philosopher
- George Santayana Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
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