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'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.
Henry David Thoreau

Those whom we can love, we can hate; to others we are indifferent.
Henry David Thoreau

It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.
Henry David Thoreau

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.
Henry David Thoreau

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
Henry David Thoreau

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
Henry David Thoreau

To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.
Henry David Thoreau

Faith never makes a confession.
Henry David Thoreau

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.
Henry David Thoreau

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.
Henry David Thoreau

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.
Henry David Thoreau

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.
Henry David Thoreau

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.
Henry David Thoreau

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.
Henry David Thoreau

There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.
Henry David Thoreau

Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.
Henry David Thoreau

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.
Henry David Thoreau

There is no just and serene criticism as yet.
Henry David Thoreau

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.
Henry David Thoreau

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?
Henry David Thoreau

There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.
Henry David Thoreau

There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor.
Henry David Thoreau

There is more of good nature than of good sense at the bottom of most marriages.
Henry David Thoreau

A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.
Henry David Thoreau

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.
Henry David Thoreau

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

Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.
Henry David Thoreau

How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?
Henry David Thoreau

Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.
Henry David Thoreau

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.
Henry David Thoreau

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.
Henry David Thoreau

Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.
Henry David Thoreau

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.
Henry David Thoreau

I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks.
Henry David Thoreau

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.
Henry David Thoreau

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.
Henry David Thoreau

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.
Henry David Thoreau

Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.
Henry David Thoreau

An unclean person is universally a slothful one.
Henry David Thoreau

Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.
Henry David Thoreau

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
Henry David Thoreau

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.
Henry David Thoreau

God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.
Henry David Thoreau

The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.
Henry David Thoreau

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

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.
Henry David Thoreau

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.
Henry David Thoreau

In the meanest are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly disposed.
Henry David Thoreau

They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
Henry David Thoreau

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.
Henry David Thoreau

It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.
Henry David Thoreau

It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.
Henry David Thoreau

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.
Henry David Thoreau

May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!
Henry David Thoreau

I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.
Henry David Thoreau

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.
Henry David Thoreau

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

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.
Henry David Thoreau

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.
Henry David Thoreau

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.
Henry David Thoreau

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?
Henry David Thoreau

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.
Henry David Thoreau

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.
Henry David Thoreau

If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.
Henry David Thoreau

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New, but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.
Henry David Thoreau

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.
Henry David Thoreau

To be awake is to be alive.
Henry David Thoreau

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
Henry David Thoreau

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed... Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.
Henry David Thoreau

How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact!
Henry David Thoreau

I have the habit of attention to such excess, that my senses get no rest - but suffer from a constant strain.
Henry David Thoreau

I cannot read a single word of the Hindoos without being elevated.
Henry David Thoreau

Every day or two, I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs.
Henry David Thoreau

I often visited a particular plant four or five miles distant, half a dozen times within a fortnight, that I might know exactly when it opened.
Henry David Thoreau

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
Henry David Thoreau

Being is the great explainer.
Henry David Thoreau

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.
Henry David Thoreau

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.
Henry David