Henry David Thoreau Quotes
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351. “Talk of mysteries! – Think of our life in nature, – daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, – rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?”

— Henry David Thoreau

352. “The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.”

— Henry David Thoreau

353. “The chimney is to some extent an independent structure, standing on the ground, and rising through the house to the heavens; evenafter the house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its importance and independence are apparent.”

— Henry David Thoreau

354. “Most men, it seems to me, do not care for Nature and would sell their share in all her beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated sum – many for a glass of rum. Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

356. “The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.”

— Henry David Thoreau

357. “Endeavor to live the life you have imagined.”

— Henry David Thoreau

358. “Poetry cannot breathe in the scholar’s atmosphere.”

— Henry David Thoreau

359. “We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue.”

— Henry David Thoreau

360. “It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.”

— Henry David Thoreau

361. “I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good.”

— Henry David Thoreau

362. “The best way to correct a mistake is to make it right.”

— Henry David Thoreau

363. “In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.”

— Henry David Thoreau

364. “I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.”

— Henry David Thoreau

365. “Let your walks now be a little more adventurous.”

— Henry David Thoreau

366. “It’s not enough to be busy.”

— Henry David Thoreau

367. “Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever.”

— Henry David Thoreau

368. “The three-o’-clock in the morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest.”

— Henry David Thoreau

369. “The silence sings. It is musical. I remember a night when it was audible. I heard the unspeakable.”

— Henry David Thoreau

370. “Friends will not only live in harmony, but in melody.”

— Henry David Thoreau

371. “You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.”

— Henry David Thoreau

372. “Love is no individual’s experience; and though we are imperfect mediums, it does not partake of our imperfection; though we are finite, it is infinite and eternal...”

— Henry David Thoreau

373. “Summer passes into autumn in some unimaginable point of time, like the turning of a leaf.”

— Henry David Thoreau

374. “I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil, – to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.”

— Henry David Thoreau

375. “If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality.”

— Henry David Thoreau

376. “We loiter in winter while it is already spring.”

— Henry David Thoreau

377. “Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.”

— Henry David Thoreau

378. “God is alone,-but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion.”

— Henry David Thoreau

379. “Oh, one world at a time!”

— Henry David Thoreau

380. “Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.”

— Henry David Thoreau

381. “It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are yourself the slave-driver.”

— Henry David Thoreau

382. “In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident.”

— Henry David Thoreau

383. “Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towardsrecognizing and organizing the rights of man?”

— Henry David Thoreau

384. “Surely joy is the condition of life.”

— Henry David Thoreau

385. “Rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings.”

— Henry David Thoreau

386. “Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other end. Do not resist. With the least inclination to be well, we should not be sick.”

— Henry David Thoreau

387. “In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts...”

— Henry David Thoreau

388. “A man sits as many risks as he runs.”

— Henry David Thoreau

389. “Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.”

— Henry David Thoreau

390. “I have a room all to myself; it is nature.”

— Henry David Thoreau

391. “Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought, go about doing good.”

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

393. “Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.”

— Henry David Thoreau

394. “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”

— Henry David Thoreau

395. “I can alter my life by altering my attitude. He who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers.”

— Henry David Thoreau

396. “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.”

— Henry David Thoreau

397. “One is wise to cultivate the tree that bears fruit in our soul.”

— Henry David Thoreau

398. “When a man truly commits, the universe will conspire to assure his success.”

— Henry David Thoreau

399. “The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.”

— Henry David Thoreau

400. “The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.”

— Henry David Thoreau