Henry David Thoreau Per Quotations

Under the one word "house" are included the schoolhouse, the almshouse, the jail, the tavern, the dwellinghouse; and the meanest shed or cave in which men live contains elements of all these. But nowhere on the earth stands the entire and perfect house.

The true finish is the work of time, and the use to which a thing is put. The elements are still polishing the pyramids.

There is a certain perfection in accident which we never consciously attain.

To the innocent there are neither cherubim nor angels.

Genius is not a retainer to any emperor.

What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that practically I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all.

Some are "industrious," and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to suchI have at present nothing to say. Those who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard as they do,--work till they pay for themselves, and get their free papers.

There are many skillful apprentices, but few master workmen.

In the unbending of the arm to do the deed there is experience worth all the maxims in the world.

If within the sophisticated man there is not an unsophisticated one, then he is but one of the devil's angels.

It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.

It is after we get home that we really go over the mountain, if ever.

The experience of every past moment but belies the faith of each present.

We are superior to the joy we experience.

The intercourse of the sexes, I have dreamed, is incredibly beautiful, too fair to be remembered. I have had thoughts about it, but they are among the most fleeting and irrecoverable in my experience.

The necessity of labor and conversation with many men and things to the scholar is rarely well remembered.

The scholar is not apt to make his most familiar experience come gracefully to the aid of his expression.

The stars are distant and unobtrusive, but bright and enduring as our fairest and most memorable experiences.

The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.

Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.

An unclean person is universally a slothful one.

Perfect alchemists I keep who can transmute substances without end, and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest. Here you can dig, not gold, but the value which gold merely represents; and there is no Signor Blitz about it.

Love is no individual's experience; and though we are imperfect mediums, it does not partake of our imperfection; though we are finite, it is infinite and eternal...

If you would be chaste, you must be temperate.

I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. I buy but a few things, and those not till long after I begin to want them, so that when I do get them I am prepared to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet.

The higher the mountain on which you stand, the less change in the prospect from year to year, from age to age. Above a certain height there is no change.

I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface ofthings. We think that that is which appears to be.

We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,--and then we can hardly see anything else.

To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it.

A man of fine perceptions is more truly feminine than a merely sentimental woman.

Do not read the newspapers.

We can conceive of nothing more fair than something which we have experienced.

Such is the never-failing beauty and accuracy of language, the most perfect art in the world; the chisel of a thousand years retouches it.

We are older by faith than by experience.

The vessel, though her masts be firm,Beneath her copper bears a worm.

Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God.

Trench says a wild man is a willed man. Well, then, a man of will who does what he wills or wishes, a man of hope and of the future tense, for not only the obstinate is willed, but far more the constant and persevering. The obstinate man, properly speaking, is one who will not. The perseverance of the saints is positive willedness, not a mere passive willingness. The fates are wild, for they will; and the Almighty is wild above all, as fate is.

I think that no experience which I have today comes up to, or is comparable with, the experiences of my boyhood.

Surely one may as profitably be soaked in the juices of a swamp for one day as pick his way dry-shod over sand. Cold and damp ? are they not as rich experience as warmth and dryness?

The value of any experience is measured, of course, not by the amount of money, but the amount of development we get out of it.

Who is old enough to have learned from experience?

It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellowmen to have an interest in your enterprise.

The future is too soon the past. So make perseverance your excellence and go confidently in the direction of your dreams.

All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.

In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin.

Nature is slow, but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance.

It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always. The conscience really does not, and ought not to monopolizethe whole of our lives, any more than the heart or the head. It is as liable to disease as any other part.

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.

Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man's art would also be wild or natural in a good sense.

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured and far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak.

How could youths better learn to live than by once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would educate their minds as much as mathematics

We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.

What are the libraries of science but files of newspapers?

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.

Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.

I belive that there is a subtile magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.

Perfect sincerity and transparency make a great part of beauty, as in dewdrops, lakes, and diamonds.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

It's not worth our while to let our imperfections disturb us always.

Why does it [government] always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?

Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.

My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas in nature.

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

To inherit property is not to be born - is to be stillborn, rather

If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music in which he hears, however measured, or far away.

One must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep, I wrote in the dark