Thoreau Quotes

"What is once well done is done forever." -- Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience)

"Why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his horse?" -- Henry David Thoreau

"Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence." -- Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience)

"Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death." -- Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience)

"'Know all men by these presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society which I have not joined' [...] I should then have signed off in detail from all the societies which I never signed on to; but I did not know where to find a complete list." -- Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience)

"I shall take care never to be Governor of Massachusetts." -- Henry David Thoreau (Slavery in Massachusetts)

"A government which deliberately enacts in injustice, and persists in it, will at length ever become the laughing-stock of the world." -- Henry David Thoreau (Slavery in Massachusetts)

"The law will never make men free; it is men who have got tot make the law free." -- Henry David Thoreau (Slavery in Massachusetts)

"The press exerts a greater and more pernicious influence than the Church did in its worst period[...] We do not care for the Bible, but we do care for the newspaper.[...] When I have taken up this paper with my cuffs turned up, I have heard the gurgling of the sewer through every column. I have felt that I was handling a paper picked out of the public gutters, a leaf from the gospel of the gambling house, the groggery and the brothel, harmonizing with the gospel of the Merchants' Exchange." -- Henry David Thoreau (Slavery in Massachusetts)

"Be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour." -- Henry David Thoreau (Slavery in Massachusetts)

"The amount of it is, if the majority vote the devil to be God, the minority will live and behave accordingly, trusting that some time or other, by some Speaker's casting vote, perhaps, they may reinstate God. This is the highest principle I can get out or invent for my neighbors." -- Henry David Thoreau (Slavery in Massachusetts)

"It does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning." -- Henry David Thoreau (Slavery in Massachusetts)

"I dwelt before, perhaps, in the illusion that my life passed somewhere only between heaven and hell, but now I cannot persuade myself that I do not dwell wholly within hell." -- Henry David Thoreau (Slavery in Massachusetts)

"My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it." -- Henry David Thoreau

"Whate'er we leave to God, God does,
And blesses us;
The work we choose should be our own,
God leaves alone." -- Henry David Thoreau (Inspiration)

"Two sturdy oaks I mean, which side by side,
Withstand the winter's storm,
And spite of wind and tide,
Grow up the meadow's pride,
For both are strong
Above they barely touch, but undermined
Down to their deepest source,
Admiring you shall find
Their roots are intertwined
Insep'rably." -- Henry David Thoreau (Friendship)

"I thought that the sun of our love should have risen as noiselessly as the sun out of the sea, and we sailors have found ourselves steering between the tropics as if the broad day had lasted forever. You know how the sun comes up from the sea when you stand on the cliff, and doesn't startle you, but every thing, and you too are helping it." -- Henry David Thoreau (Journal 1, 193)

"When we heard that he was dead, one of my townsmen observed that "he died as the fool dieth;" which, pardon me, for an instant suggested a likeness in him dying to my neighbor living." -- Henry David Thoreau (A Plea for Captain John Brown)

"I don't suppose he could get four-and-sixpence a day for being hung [...] No doubt you can het more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to." -- Henry David Thoreau (A Plea for Captain John Brown)

"No man had ever died in America before, for in order to die you must first have lived [...] Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began [...] We make a needless ado about capital punishment -- taking lives when there is no life to take [...] We've wholly forgotten how to die [...] Be sure you do die, nevertheless. Do your work and finish it. If you know how to begin, you will know when to end." -- Henry David Thoreau (A Plea for Captain John Brown)

"Why work like a dog so you can pant for a moment or two before you die?" -- Henry David Thoreau

"I think Lucifer was a lawyer: that's why the Devil still gives advice to Presidents," -- Henry David Thoreau (The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee)