Quotes from Henry David Thoreau
Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.
— Henry David Thoreau
That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.
— Henry David Thoreau
He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise.
— Henry David Thoreau
When a man's conscience and the laws clash, it is his conscience that he must follow.
— Henry David Thoreau
The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?
— Henry David Thoreau
When it's time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.
— Henry David Thoreau
Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? Or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are NOT good?
— Henry David Thoreau
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.
— Henry David Thoreau
The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky.
— Henry David Thoreau
The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.
— Henry David Thoreau
We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.
— Henry David Thoreau
I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again; and then there would be some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor.
— Henry David Thoreau