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Truth Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

109 Truth quotes by Henry David Thoreau

All Truth quotes Henry David Thoreau’s page

Henry David Thoreau writes that truth is not just a pleasant idea but a solid foundation you can feel everywhere. He says a lawyer's truth is only about consistency, while a true belief must hold up the whole world like a framework. He also notes that honest speech often carries bitterness, and that truth needs both a speaker and a listener.

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Here or nowhere is our heaven.

Henry David Thoreau

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A fact may blossom into a truth.

Henry David Thoreau

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Between whom there is hearty truth there is love…

Henry David Thoreau

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Truth is always paradoxical.

Henry David Thoreau

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Only lovers know the value and magnanimity of truth.

Henry David Thoreau

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The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly.

Henry David Thoreau

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All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.

Henry David Thoreau

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Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Henry David Thoreau

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If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends!

Henry David Thoreau

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It is not enough that we are truthful; we must cherish and carry out high purposes to be truthful about.

Henry David Thoreau

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He who cannot exaggerate is not qualified to utter truth.

Henry David Thoreau

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

Henry David Thoreau

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Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even stone walls have their foundation below the frost.

Henry David Thoreau

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It takes two to speak truth, one to speak and another to hear.

Henry David Thoreau

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As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole life.

Henry David Thoreau

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

Henry David Thoreau

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I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limit of my…

Henry David Thoreau

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If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. Rather than love, than money, than fame,…

Henry David Thoreau

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It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad; his life may be true, or…

Henry David Thoreau

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It is impossible to say all that we think, even to our truest Friend. We may bid him farewell forever sooner than…

Henry David Thoreau

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While my friend was my friend, he flattered me, and I never heard the truth from him. When he became my enemy,…

Henry David Thoreau

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Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them - that it was…

Henry David Thoreau

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I know of no redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved I fall…

Henry David Thoreau

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There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never…

Henry David Thoreau

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They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by…

Henry David Thoreau

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Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths the fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practice in this workshop; truths…

Henry David Thoreau

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Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow…

Henry David Thoreau

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Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love; and in proportion to our truthfulness and confidence in one another, our lives…

Henry David Thoreau

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To one who habitually endeavors to contemplate the true state of things, the political state can hardly be said to have any…

Henry David Thoreau

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Letter-writing too often degenerates into a communicating of facts, and not of truths; of other men's deeds and not our thoughts.What are…

Henry David Thoreau

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After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive…

Henry David Thoreau

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“It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which…

Henry David Thoreau

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It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which…

Henry David Thoreau

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“I was once reproved by a minister who was driving a poor beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds among the hills of New…

Henry David Thoreau

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Very few men can speak of Nature, for instance, with any truth. They overstep her modesty, somehow or other, and confer no…

Henry David Thoreau

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No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are…

Henry David Thoreau

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“As with our colleges, so with a hundred ‘modern improvements;’ there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive…

Henry David Thoreau

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Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Henry David Thoreau

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The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.

Henry David Thoreau

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Poetry implies the whole truth. Philosophy expresses a particle of it.

Henry David Thoreau

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If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am…

Henry David Thoreau

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

Henry David Thoreau

“Men say they know many things; But lo! they have taken wings, — The arts and sciences, And a thousand appliances; The wind that…

Henry David Thoreau

I am not afraid of praise, for I have practiced it on myself.

Henry David Thoreau

“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or back gammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and…

Henry David Thoreau

“This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of…

Henry David Thoreau

As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may…

Henry David Thoreau

A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.

Henry David Thoreau

In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the…

Henry David Thoreau

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

Henry David Thoreau

The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel.

Henry David Thoreau

Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe.

Henry David Thoreau

The lumberers rarely trouble themselves to put out their fires, such is the dampness of the primitive forest; and this is one cause, no…

Henry David Thoreau

“When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to…

Henry David Thoreau

Wealth is measured by the level of experience in all aspects of life

Henry David Thoreau