Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We all live according to rule. Some men are bedridden all world-ridden.
Henry David Thoreau
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Live
Even
Ridden
Men
Rarely
World
According
Rule
Meet
Free
Thought
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
Henry David Thoreau
Life is so short that it is not wise to take roundabout ways, nor can we spend much time in waiting.... We have not got half-way to dawn yet.
Henry David Thoreau
Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old return to them. Things do not change we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.
Henry David Thoreau
If rightly made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird.
Henry David Thoreau
Much of our poetry has the very best manners, but no character.
Henry David Thoreau
The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes their widest deductions.
Henry David Thoreau
The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.
Henry David Thoreau
There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography.
Henry David Thoreau
The object of love expands and grows before us to eternity, until it includes all that is lovely, and we become all that can love.
Henry David Thoreau
He who is conversant with the supernal powers will not worship these inferior deities of the wind, waves, tide, and sunshine. Butwe would not disparage the importance of such calculations as we have described. They are truths in physics because they are true in ethics.
Henry David Thoreau
Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.
Henry David Thoreau
An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed.
Henry David Thoreau
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
Henry David Thoreau
It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.
Henry David Thoreau
I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.
Henry David Thoreau
Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.
Henry David Thoreau
Look not to legislatures and churches for your guidance, nor to any soulless incorporated bodies, but to inspirited or inspired ones.
Henry David Thoreau
Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.
Henry David Thoreau
A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent lyres are struck.
Henry David Thoreau
I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?
Henry David Thoreau
