Henry David Thoreau Truth Quotations

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

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

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

Men are probably nearer the central truth in their superstitions than in their science

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

The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among Englishmen and Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent,--others merely sensible, as the phrase is,--others prophetic.

If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends!

Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom everywhere.

Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. "Tell the tailors," said he, "to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch." His companion's prayer is forgotten.

Exaggeration! was ever any virtue attributed to a man without exaggeration? was ever any vice, without infinite exaggeration? Do we not exaggerate ourselves to ourselves, or do we recognize ourselves for the actual men we are? Are we not all great men? Yet what are we actually, to speak of? We live by exaggeration.

He who cannot exaggerate is not qualified to utter truth.

You have but little more to do than throw up your cap for entertainment these American days.... Farmers' sons will stare by the hour to see a juggler draw ribbons from his throat, though he tells them it is all deception. Surely, men love darkness rather than light.

Whoever can discern truth has received his commission from a higher source than the chiefest justice in the world who can discernonly law. He finds himself constituted judge of the judge. Strange that it should be necessary to state such simple truths!

All expression of truth does at length take this deep ethical form.

Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.

That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but superficial, it was!--only another kind of politics or dancing. Men were making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stood on truth. They were merely banded together, as usual one leaning on another, and all together on nothing.

What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and sublimest truth?

It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad; his life may be true, or it may be false; it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up; the bad man destroys himself.

You speak of poverty and dependence. Who are poor and dependent? Who are rich and independent? When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality?

How sweet it would be to treat men and things, for an hour, for just what they are!

There is none who does not lie hourly in the respect he pays to false appearance.

Expect no trivial truth from me, unless I am on the witness- stand. I will come as near to lying as you can drive a coach and four.

It is not enough that we are truthful; we must cherish and carry out high purposes to be truthful about.

No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation.

When we come down into the distant village, visible from the mountain-top, the nobler inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed, and left only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination of poets which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of their heroes.

Fame itself is but an epitaph; as late, as false, as true.

Your scheme must be the framework of the universe; all other schemes will soon be ruins.

Stuff a cold and starve a cold are but two ways. They are the two practices, both always in full blast. Yet you must take the advice of the one school as if there was no other.

This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest posterity, content with slightly and religiously retouchingthe old material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity.

As for the tenets of the Brahmans, we are not so much concerned to know what doctrines they held, as that they were held by any. We can tolerate all philosophies.... It is the attitude of these men, more than any communication which they make, that attracts us.

Here or nowhere is our heaven.

There are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically opposite.

Only lovers know the value and magnanimity of truth.

The whole body of what is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature are the purest morality.

If there is nothing new on the earth, still the traveler always has a resource in the skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types on this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new truth there.

Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness the polisher of his sentences. He could afford to lose his Sharp's rifles, while he retained his faculty of speech,--a Sharp's rifle of infinitely surer and longer range.

There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know.

It is impossible to say all that we think, even to our truest Friend. We may bid him farewell forever sooner than complain, for our complaint is too well grounded to be uttered.

To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common sense,it contains only enduring and essential truth, the I and you, the here and there, the now and then, being omitted. Either time or rare wisdom writes it.

Exaggerated history is poetry, and truth referred to a new standard.

You may rely on it that you have the best of me in my books, and that I am not worth seeing personally, the stuttering, blunderingclod-hopper that I am. Even poetry, you know, is in one sense an infinite brag and exaggeration. Not that I do not stand on all that I have written,--but what am I to the truth I feebly utter?

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

The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.

Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.

Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

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

As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole life.

Where there is a lull in truth an institution springs up.

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

I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.

Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower into a truth.

I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limit of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced.

Truth is always paradoxical.

Men are probably nearer the essential truth in their superstitions than in their science.

Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.

I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.

I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.