Famous Quotes & Sayings

Henry David Thoreau

I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me tobe doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.... The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor.

Henry David Thoreau

You must get your living by loving. But as it is said of the merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied.

Henry David Thoreau

A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread.

Henry David Thoreau

Cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off.

Henry David Thoreau

Men should not labor foolishly like brutes, but the brain and the body should always, or as much as possible, work and rest together, and then the work will be of such a kind that when the body is hungry the brain will be hungry also, and the same food will suffice for both; otherwise the food which repairs the waste energy of the overwrought body will oppress the sedentary brain, and the degenerate scholar will come to esteem all food vulgar, and all getting a living drudgery.

Henry David Thoreau

Unless the human race perspire more than I do, there is no occasion to live by the sweat of their brow. If men cannot get on without money (the smallest amount will suffice), the truest method of earning it is by working as a laborer at one dollar per day. You are least dependent so; I speak as an expert, having used several kinds of labor.

Henry David Thoreau

The Man of Genius may at the same time be, indeed is commonly, an Artist, but the two are not to be confounded. The Man of Genius,referred to mankind, is an originator, an inspired or demonic man, who produces a perfect work in obedience to laws yet unexplored. 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. There has been no man of pure Genius, as there has been none wholly destitute of Genius.

Henry David Thoreau

When a man dies he kicks the dust.

Henry David Thoreau

One who knew how to appropriate the true value of this world would be the poorest man in it. The poor rich man! all he has is whathe has bought.

Henry David Thoreau

I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither.

Henry David Thoreau

What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?

Henry David Thoreau

It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another.

Henry David Thoreau

Man needs to know but little more than a lobster in order to catch him in his traps.

Henry David Thoreau

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

It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so.

Henry David Thoreau

A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.

Henry David Thoreau

Such were garrulous and noisy eras, which no longer yield any sound, but the Grecian or silent and melodious era is ever soundingand resounding in the ears of men.

Henry David Thoreau

Let a slight snow come and cover the earth, and the tracks of men will show how little the woods and fields are frequented.

Henry David Thoreau

One revelation has been made to the Indian, another to the white man.

Henry David Thoreau

In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.

Henry David Thoreau

The journalists think that they cannot say too much in favor of such "improvements" in husbandry; it is a safe theme, like piety;but as for the beauty of one of these "model farms," I would as lief see a patent churn and a man turning it. They are, commonly, places merely where somebody is making money, it may be counterfeiting.

Henry David Thoreau

There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.

Henry David Thoreau

But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire.... The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.

Henry David Thoreau

Most men cry better than they speak. You get more nurture out of them by pinching than addressing them.

Henry David Thoreau

Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly towards an object, and in no measure obtained it? If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them,--that it was a vain endeavor?

Henry David Thoreau

Late in the afternoon we passed a man on the shore fishing with a long birch pole.... The characteristics and pursuits of various ages and races of men are always existing in epitome in every neighborhood. The pleasures of my earliest youth have become the inheritance of other men. This man is still a fisher, and belongs to an era in which I myself have lived.

Henry David Thoreau

Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him.

Henry David Thoreau

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.

Henry David Thoreau

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

Henry David Thoreau

This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge... It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature.

Henry David Thoreau

The Indian...stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison.

Henry David Thoreau

Men reverence one another, not yet God.

Henry David Thoreau

There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.