Henry David Thoreau Quotes
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401. “Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.”

— Henry David Thoreau

402. “Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.”

— Henry David Thoreau

403. “What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!”

— Henry David Thoreau

404. “I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.”

— Henry David Thoreau

405. “The only wealth is life.”

— Henry David Thoreau

406. “Men talk about Bible miracles because there is no miracle in their lives. Cease to gnaw that crust. There is ripe fruit over your head.”

— Henry David Thoreau

407. “Dissent without action is consent.”

— Henry David Thoreau

408. “No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow.”

— Henry David Thoreau

409. “You must ascend a mountain to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body, for it is at home there, though you are not.”

— Henry David Thoreau

410. “We should never stand upon ceremony with sincerity. We should never cheat and insult and banish one another by our meanness, if there were present the kernel of worth and friendliness. We should not meet thus in haste.”

— Henry David Thoreau

411. “No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher.”

— Henry David Thoreau

412. “A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart.”

— Henry David Thoreau

413. “For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once done well is done forever.”

— Henry David Thoreau

414. “When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis.”

— Henry David Thoreau

415. “To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.”

— Henry David Thoreau

416. “We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bone.”

— Henry David Thoreau

417. “There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.”

— Henry David Thoreau

418. “Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.”

— Henry David Thoreau

419. “If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.”

— Henry David Thoreau

420. “By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.”

— Henry David Thoreau

421. “There is no beginning too small.”

— Henry David Thoreau

422. “There is more religion in men’s science, than there is science in their religion.”

— Henry David Thoreau

423. “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.”

— Henry David Thoreau

424. “Our molting season, like that of the fouls, must be a crisis in our lives.”

— Henry David Thoreau

425. “Knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another’s experience only by his own.”

— Henry David Thoreau

426. “The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening.”

— Henry David Thoreau

427. “To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it.”

— Henry David Thoreau

428. “Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.”

— Henry David Thoreau

429. “Who looks in the sun will see no light else; but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.”

— Henry David Thoreau

430. “The little things in life are as interesting as the big ones.”

— Henry David Thoreau

431. “I was not born to be forced.”

— Henry David Thoreau

432. “Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are constantly being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.”

— Henry David Thoreau

433. “Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes.”

— Henry David Thoreau

434. “When the true criminals are running around free, the only honorable place for a decent human being is in prisons.”

— Henry David Thoreau

435. “When I hear a grown man or woman say, “Once I had faith in men, now I have not,” I am inclined to ask, “Who are you whom the world has disappointed? Have not you rather disappointed the world?””

— Henry David Thoreau

436. “Then at night the general stillness is more impressive than any sound, but occasionally you hear the note of an owl farther or nearer in the woods, and if near a lake, the semihuman cry of the loons at their unearthly revels.”

— Henry David Thoreau

437. “The thoughtful man becomes a hermit in the thoroughfares of the marketplace.”

— Henry David Thoreau

438. “Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always. Every house is, in this sense, a hospital.”

— Henry David Thoreau

439. “Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in them much.”

— Henry David Thoreau

440. “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”

— Henry David Thoreau

441. “The traveler must be born again on the road, and earn a passport from the elements.”

— Henry David Thoreau

442. “Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.”

— Henry David Thoreau

443. “Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of its current, which is scarcely perceptible, and some have referred to its influence the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of Concord, as exhibited in the Revolution, and on later occasions.”

— Henry David Thoreau

444. “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.”

— Henry David Thoreau

445. “No man who acts from a sense of duty ever puts the lesser duty above the greater. No man has the desire and the ability to work onhigh things, but he has also the ability to build himself a high staging.”

— Henry David Thoreau

446. “There will never be a really free and enlightened state until the state comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived.”

— Henry David Thoreau

447. “While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.”

— Henry David Thoreau

448. “Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail.”

— Henry David Thoreau

449. “To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust.”

— Henry David Thoreau

450. “Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds?”

— Henry David Thoreau