Quotes from Henry David Thoreau

Even in civilized communities, the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of development.

The gross feeder is a man in the larva state; and there are whole nations in that condition, nations without fancy or imagination,whose vast abdomens betray them.

There are various, nay, incredible faiths; why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes.

It is not in vain that man speaks to man. This is the value of literature.

This life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any account men give of it.

Men commonly couple with their idea of marriage a slight degree at least of sensuality; but every lover, the world over, believesin its inconceivable purity.

A man of rare common sense and directness of speech, as of action; a transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and principles,Mthat was what distinguished him.

The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race.

An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not.

Somehow strangely the vice of men gets well represented and protected but their virtue has none to plead its cause - nor any charter of immunities and rights.

I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice ... While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. He is a different sort of man, that's all.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

I would that I were worthy to be any man's Friend.

In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven.

Shall a man not have his spring as well as the plants?

There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.

Man is but the place where I stand.

Man's moral nature is a riddle which only eternity can solve.

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.

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.

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

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

The gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain.

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