Henry David Thoreau Last Quotations

The chickadee and nuthatch are more inspiring society than statesmen and philosophers, and we shall return to these last as to more vulgar companions.

This is one of those instances in which the individual genius is found to consent, as indeed it always does, at last, with the universal.

If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui.

Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted is method.

Of what use the friendliest disposition even, if there are no hours given to Friendship, if it is forever postponed to unimportant duties and relations? Friendship first, Friendship last.

It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.

The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last.

If we dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak truth.

We boast of our system of education, but why stop at schoolmasters and schoolhouses? We are all schoolmasters, and our schoolhouse is the universe. To attend chiefly to the desk or schoolhouse while we neglect the scenery in which it is placed is absurd. If we do not look out we shall find our find schoolhouse standing in a cow-yard at last.

All endeavour calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil.

Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most sensitive.

I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor.

Listen to music religiously, as if it were the last strain you might hear.

What the first philosopher taught the last will have to repeat.

I did not know that we had ever quarreled.

Everything counts for gain when we are cosmically awake. Nothing counts, unless we are awake. No enjoyments last, no successes satisfy, no gains have meaning unless accomplished in a state of wakefulness.

I did not know at first what ailed me. At last it occurred to me that what I had lost was a country.