Famous Quotes

Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

• The law will never make a man free it is men who have got to make the law free.
• The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.
• The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
• The man who goes alone can start today but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
• The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
• The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
• The perception of beauty is a moral test.
• The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
• The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.
• The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.
• There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.
• There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.
• There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.
• There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.
• There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.
• There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.
• There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
• There is no remedy for love but to love more.
• There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.
• They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
• Things do not change we change.
• This world is but a canvas to our imagination.
• Those whom we can love, we can hate to others we are indifferent.
• Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
• To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
• To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
• To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.
• To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
• True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
• Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.
• Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
• We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.
• We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.
• Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.
• What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.
• What is human warfare but just this an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.
• What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
• What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.