Top Thoreau Quotes

In 1881, being on a visit to Boston, my wife and I found ourselves in the Parker House with the 's, and went over to Charleston to hear him lecture. His subject was 'Some Mistakes of Moses,' and it wa...

The American woods have been unnerving people for 300 years. The inestimably priggish and tiresome Henry David Thoreau thought nature was splendid, splendid indeed, so long as he could stroll to town...

Ultimately, I found my instincts mirrored in a line from Thoreau: 'My needle...always settles between west and south-southwest. The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more exhausted and r...

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest ha...

It is life near the bone where it is sweetest.

The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and try their effect on our humanity. Only daring and...

I was disturbed by how many of my classmates disliked Thoreau, railed against him even, as if he (who claimed never to have learned anything of value from an old person) was an enemy and not a friend....

There is no remedy for love but to love more."- Henry David Thoreau

Books had rescued me when i most needed saving... Books were smarter than me and words inspired me... to try something new, charge forward without a clear understanding of what would happen next, beca...

Be careful... What the dude said, ain’t it? ... One lived in the woods and didn’t pay his taxes. Musta been before Lyme disease, when you could still get by with that shit. You know the dude I talkin’...

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, whic...

Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other.We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that...

This afternoon, being on Fair Haven Hill, I heard the sound of a saw, and soon after from the Cliff saw two men sawing down a noble pine beneath, about forty rods off. I resolved to watch it till it f...

Thoreau loved ants. He'd meet one in the morning and spend the whole day talking to him.

We know but few man, a great many coats and breeches.

[Thoreau's] famous night in jail took place about halfway through his stay in the cabin on Emerson's woodlot at Walden Pond. His two-year stint in the small cabin he built himself is often portrayed a...