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Henry David Thoreau: 770 quotes96 likes

“The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race. In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine.”

Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

“For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it.”

Henry David Thoreau

After February 22, 1846
Journals (1838-1859)

“The Indian…stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison.”

Henry David Thoreau

April 26, 1841
Journals (1838-1859)

“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.”

Henry David Thoreau

First attributed to Thoreau in A year of sunshine: cheerful extracts for every day in the year‎ (Kate Sanborn, 1886) and American literature‎ (Mildred Cabell Watkins, 1894), but there is no known citation to Thoreau's works.
Misattributed

“But now I see I was not plucked for naught,
And after in life's vase
Of glass set while I might survive,
But by a kind hand brought
Alive
To a strange place.”

Henry David Thoreau

"I am a parcel of vain strivings tied", st. 6 (1841)

“When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is, that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

“It is a great art to saunter.”

Henry David Thoreau

April 26, 1841
Journals (1838-1859)

“It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves.”

Henry David Thoreau

August 30, 1856
Journals (1838-1859)

“When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

“Who looks in the sun will see no light else; but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.”

Henry David Thoreau

March 10, 1841
Journals (1838-1859)

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison… the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

“I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks.”

Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

“The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”

Henry David Thoreau

April 3, 1852
Journals (1838-1859)

“The savage in man is never quite eradicated.”

Henry David Thoreau

September 26, 1859
Journals (1838-1859)

“To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. We select granite for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

“He would have left a Greek accent slanting the wrong way, and righted up a falling man.”

Henry David Thoreau book A Plea for Captain John Brown

A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)

“What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.”

Henry David Thoreau

Attributed to Thoreau, in The Life You Were Born to Live : A Guide to Finding Your Life Purpose (1995) by Dan Millman, p. xi, and to Ralph Waldo Emerson in Promotion of Pharmaceuticals : Issues, Trends, Options (1993) by Dev S. Pathak, Alan Escovitz, and Suzan Kucukarslan, p. 74, but no occurrence of it prior to the 1990s has been located.
Disputed

“It is so rare to meet with a man out-doors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands.”

Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Friday

“I am grateful for what I am & have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite — only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next 1000 years, & exhaust it. How sweet to think of! My extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it — for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.”

Henry David Thoreau

Letter to Harrison Gray Otis Blake (6&7 December 1856), as published in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau (1958), p. 444; a line within this has been most quoted since 1865 in the form "I am ready to try this for the next ten thousand years, and exhaust it."