Henry David Thoreau - Thoreau Book of Quotations

He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruits of riches, who summer and winter forever can find delight in his own thoughts.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

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

Familiar Letters

New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion, and perhaps somebodys castle-roof perforated.

Familiar Letters

Genius is a light which makes darkness visible, like the lightnings flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself,and not a taper lighted at the hearth-stone of the race, which pales before the light of common day.

Walking

Truth strikes us from behind, and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.

Journal

Ever and anon something will occur which my philosophy has not dreamed of. The limits of the actual are set some thoughts further off. That which had seemed a rigid wall of vast thickness unexpectedly proves a thin and undulating drapery.

Journal

Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them, for there is no power to see in the eye itself, any more than in any other jelly.

Autumnal Tints

What shall we make of the fact that you have only to stand on your head a moment to be enchanted with the beauty of the landscape?

Journal

It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hairs breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.

Journal

I am, perchance, most and most profitably interested in the things which I already know a little about; a mere and utter novelty is a mere monstrosity to me.

Journal

We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,and then we can hardly see anything else.

Autumnal Tints

Whether he sleeps or wakes,whether he runs or walks,whether he uses a microscope or a telescope, or his naked eye,a man never discovers anything, never overtakes anything, or leaves anything behind, but himself.

Familiar Letters

This world is but canvass to our imaginations.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

The landscape lies far and fair within, and the deepest thinker is the farthest traveled.

A Walk to Wachusett

As Bonaparte sent out his horsemen in the Red Sea on all sides to find shallow water, so I sent forth my mounted thoughts to find deep water.

Familiar Letters

Any sincere thought is irresistible.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

If I am visited by a thought, I chew that cud each successive morning, as long as there is any flavor in it.

Journal

Our genius is like a brush which only once in many months is freshly dipped into the paint-pot. It becomes so dry that though we apply it incessantly, it fails to tinge the earth and sky. Applied to the same spot incessantly, it at length imparts no color to it.

Journal

It is a far more difficult feat to get up without spilling your morning thought, than that which is often practiced of taking a cup of water from behind your head as you lie on your back and drinking from it.

Journal

When my thoughts are sensible of change, I love to see and sit on rocks which I have known, and pry into their moss, and see unchangeableness so established.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.

Journal

How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret anothers experience only by his own.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

No idea is so soaring but it will readily put forth roots.

Joumal

Like the fruits, when cooler weather and frosts arrive, we too are braced and ripened. When we shift from the shady to the sunny side of the house, and sit there in an extra coat for warmth, our green and leafy and pulpy thoughts acquire color and flavor, and perchance a sweet nuttiness at last, worth your cracking.

Journal

When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence,that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of reality.

Walden

By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.

Walden

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

Walden

The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels.

Walden