Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.

I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.

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?

I have the habit of attention to such excess, that my senses get no rest - but suffer from a constant strain.

Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

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.

You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.

To be awake is to be completely alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.

If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone.

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.

Every man must walk to the beat of his own drummer.

Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection.

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.

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

Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

As for men, they will hardly fail one anywhere. I had more visitors while I lived in the woods than at any other period of my life; I mean that I had some.

It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.

Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.

The life without men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

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

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