Famous Quotes by Henry David Thoreau (298 Quotations)

People die of fright and live of confidence.

Henry David Thoreau – [Fear]

Pity the man who has a character to support –it is worse than a large family — he is silent poor indeed.

Henry David Thoreau – [Character]

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.

Henry David Thoreau – [Poetry and Poets]

Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

Henry David Thoreau – [Politicians and Politics]

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Henry David Thoreau – [Public Opinion]

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Henry David Thoreau – [Truth]

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Henry David Thoreau – [Books and Reading]

Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?

Henry David Thoreau – [Home]

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

Henry David Thoreau – [Silence]

Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality.

Henry David Thoreau – [Society]

Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.

Henry David Thoreau – [Wit]

Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

Henry David Thoreau – [Speech]

Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.

Henry David Thoreau – [Wealth]

Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone… I never yet met with, or heard of, a judge who was not a slave of this kind, and so the finest and most unfailing weapon of injustice. He fetches a slightly higher price than the black men only because he is a more valuable slave.

Henry David Thoreau – [Slavery]

That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest?

Henry David Thoreau – [Trains]

That government is best which governs least.

Henry David Thoreau – [Government]

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

Henry David Thoreau – [Riches]

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.

Henry David Thoreau – [Virtue]

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Henry David Thoreau – [Crafts]

The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.

Henry David Thoreau – [Mediocrity]