"When the leaves fall, the whole earth is a cemetery pleasant to walk in. I love to wander and muse over them in their graves. Here are no lying nor vain epitaphs."
Read quote
10 likes
Quote collection
Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 27 of 139)
2.8K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The Universal Soul, as it is called, has an interest in the stacking of hay, the foddering of cattle, and the draining of peat-meadows."
Read quote
10 likes
"'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes."
Read quote
10 likes
"If you take this life to be simply what old religious folks pretend (I mean the effete, gone to seed in a drought, mere human galls stung by the devil once), then all your joy and serenity is reduced to grinning and bearing it. The fact is, you have got to take the world on your shoulders like Atlas, and "put along" with it. You will do this for an idea's sake, and your success will be in proportion to your devotion to ideas. It may make your back ache occasionally, but you will have the satisfaction of hanging it or twirling it to suit yourself."
Read quote
10 likes
"The highest condition of art is artlessness."
Read quote
10 likes
"Listen to music religiously, as if it were the last strain you might hear."
Read quote
10 likes
"After reading Howitt's account of the Australian gold-diggings one evening,... I asked myself why I might not be washing some golddaily, though it were only the finest particles,--why I might not sink a shaft down to the gold within me, and work that mine.... At any rate, I might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with love and reverence."
Read quote
10 likes
"How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character?"
Read quote
10 likes
"I hear beyond the range of sound, I see beyond the range of sight, New earths and skies and seas around, And in my day the sun doth pale his light."
Read quote
10 likes
"Don't be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so."
Read quote
10 likes
"I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men. The former are so much the freer."
Read quote
10 likes
"If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life."
Read quote
9 likes
"Anyone in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law."
Read quote
9 likes
"No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well."
Read quote
9 likes
"We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see."
Read quote
9 likes
"The world rests on principles."
Read quote
9 likes
"Surely joy is the condition of life."
Read quote
9 likes
"Do you know how the naturalist learns all the secrets of the forest, of plants, of birds, of beasts, of reptiles, of fishes, of the rivers and the sea? When he goes into the woods the birds fly before him and he finds none; when he goes to the river bank, the fish and the reptile swim away and leave him alone. His secret is patience; he sits down, and sits still; he is a statue; he is a log."
Read quote
9 likes
"The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode."
Read quote
9 likes
"Resign yourself to the influence of the earth."
Read quote
9 likes