Famous Quotes by Henry David Thoreau (298 Quotations)

We feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any pure grief is ample recompense for all. That is, if we are faithful; — for a spent grief is but sympathy with the soul that disposes events, and is as natural as the resin of Arabian trees. — Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.

Henry David Thoreau – [Bereavement]

We hate the kindness which we understand.

Henry David Thoreau – [Kindness]

We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.

Henry David Thoreau – [Friends and Friendship]

We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.

Henry David Thoreau – [Character]

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 – [Respectability]

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 – [Faith]

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.

Henry David Thoreau – [Success]

We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.

Henry David Thoreau – [Intelligence and Intellectuals]

We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.

Henry David Thoreau – [Wilderness]

We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.

Henry David Thoreau – [Influence]

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.

Henry David Thoreau – [Adulthood]

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

Henry David Thoreau – [Understanding]

We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.

Henry David Thoreau – [Home]

We were born to succeed, not to fail.

Henry David Thoreau – [Success]

We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.

Henry David Thoreau – [Fashion]

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

Henry David Thoreau – [Wealth]

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.

Henry David Thoreau – [Education]

What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.

Henry David Thoreau – [Animals]

What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Henry David Thoreau – [Resignation]

What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts. In one direction or another he strives to live a supernatural life.

Henry David Thoreau – [Instinct]