Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard.

What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties!

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

Simplicity is the law of nature for men as well as for flowers.

A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.

Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?

Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food

The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.

No humane being... will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. The squirrels also grew at last to be quite familiar, and occasionally stepped upon my shoe, when that was the nearest way.

The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter... It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and dryness.

But the place which you have selected for your camp, though never so rough and grim, begins at once to have its attractions, and becomes a very centre of civilization to you: "Home is home, be it never so homely."

We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds...

I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man...

I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness.

It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery.

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.

Exaggeration! was ever any virtue attributed to a man without exaggeration? Do we not exaggerate ourselves to ourselves...? We live by exaggeration. What else is it to anticipate more than we enjoy? The lightning is an exaggeration of the light. Exaggerated history is poetry, and truth referred to a new standard. To a small man every greater is an exaggeration.

We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled...

It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.

The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time.

Unless we do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but apprentices, and not yet masters of the art of life.