Henry David Thoreau Quotes

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

Water is so much more fine and sensitive an element than earth. A single boatman passing up or down the whole of a wide river, and disturbs its every reflection. The air is an element which our voices shake still further than our oars the water.

Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin!

I would rather never taste chickens’ meat nor hens’ eggs than never to see a hawk sailing through the upper air again.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness.

The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such as shared the serenity of nature.

I have not read far in the statutes of this Commonwealth. It is not profitable reading. They do not always say what is true; and they do not always mean what they say.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise.

Unless the human race perspire more than I do, there is no occasion to live by the sweat of their brow.

The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. 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.