Famous Quotes

Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

• Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
• That government is best which governs least.
• 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.
• The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
• The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
• The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
• The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.
• The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
• 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.