Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

"It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?"

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”

The earth I tread on is not a dead inert mass. It is a body—has a spirit—is organic—and fluid to the influence of its spirit—and to whatever particle of the spirit is in me.

Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!

Men have become tools of their tools.

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends…. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

Be wary of any enterprise that requires new clothes.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think is right…Law never made man a whit more just.

They who assert the purest right, and consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt State, commonly have not spent much time accumulating property. The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; and it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it.

“Men spend the best parts of their lives earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.”

Be not simply good; be good for something.

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.