Henry David Thoreau And Quotations

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for law, so much as a respect for right.

Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It's thin current slides away, but eternity remains.

What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing about the origin and destiny of cats?

Associate reverently, as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.

How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.

Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.

Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it.

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.

The tree of Knowledge is a Tree of Knowledge of good and evil.

How prompt we are to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our bodies; how slow to satisfy the hunger and thirst of our souls!

Don't be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

But what is quackery? It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by addressing his body alone. There is need of a physician who shall minister to both soul and body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls between two stools.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority.

It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret in the woods ...

He who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind, is yet but half alive, is still-born.

I would remind my countrymen, that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour. No matter how valuable law may be to protect your property, even to keep soul and body together, if it do not keep you and humanity together.