Henry David Thoreau quotations and quotes

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.

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

What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge.

The government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

The universe is wider than our views of it.

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.

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.

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

All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.

Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised. Heaven might be defined as the place which men avoid.

The attitude of resistance is one of weakness inasmuch as it only faces an enemy. It has its back to all that is truly attractive.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind.

No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields.

God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.