Henry David Thoreau

I wished to live deliberately

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which …

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.

Men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.

The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind.

It is so rare to meet with a man out-doors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands.

What are the earth and all its interests beside the deep surmise which pierces and scatters them?

As if our birth had at first sundered things, and we had been thrust up through into nature like a wedge, and not till the wound heals and the scar disappears, do we begin to discover where we are, and that nature is one and continuous …

The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

A poem is one undivided unimpeded expression fallen ripe into literature, and it is undividedly and unimpededly received by those for whom it was matured.

Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.

A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.

The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact, though that fact be his neighbor, there is an unsettled wilderness between him and Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, farther still, between …

Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us.

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

This world is but canvas to our imaginations.

Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be incrusted over with sublime and …

It takes two to speak the truth, — one to speak, and another to hear.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

It would be worth the while to look closely into the eye which has been open and seeing at such hours, and in such solitudes, its dull, yellowish, greenish eye. Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.