Humans Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

What would human life be without forests, those natural cities?

— Henry David Thoreau

It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being.

— Henry David Thoreau

I do not believe there are eight hundred human beings on the globe.

— Henry David Thoreau

Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven?

— Henry David Thoreau

The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last.

— Henry David Thoreau

So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.

— Henry David Thoreau

Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her.

— Henry David Thoreau

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement, to leave off…

— Henry David Thoreau

There is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine,…

— Henry David Thoreau

When the true criminals are running around free, the only honorable place for a decent human being is in prisons.

— Henry David Thoreau

We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies.

— Henry David Thoreau

The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There…

— Henry David Thoreau

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

— Henry David Thoreau

There are various tough problems yet to solve, and we must shift to live, betwixt spirit and matter, such a human life…

— Henry David Thoreau

True kindness is a pure divine affinity, Not founded upon human consanguinity. It is a spirit, not a blood relation, Superior to…

— Henry David Thoreau

I do not believe in lawyers, in that mode of attacking or defending a man, because you descend to meet the judge…

— Henry David Thoreau

He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested…

— Henry David Thoreau

Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions…

— Henry David Thoreau

Unless the human race perspire more than I do, there is no occasion to live by the sweat of their brow. If…

— Henry David Thoreau

As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my…

— Henry David Thoreau

I wish my countrymen to consider that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit…

— Henry David Thoreau

Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being so rapidly added to the sum of human experience, that it appears as…

— Henry David Thoreau

I do not remember anything which Confucius has said directly respecting man's "origin, purpose, and destiny." He was more practical than that.…

— Henry David Thoreau

The civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as…

— Henry David Thoreau

There is, however, this consolation to the most way-worn traveler, upon the dustiest road, that the path his feet describe is so…

— Henry David Thoreau

Christ was a sublime actor on the stage of the world. He knew what he was thinking of when he said, "Heaven…

— Henry David Thoreau

If you take this life to be simply what old religious folks pretend (I mean the effete, gone to seed in a…

— Henry David Thoreau

In war, in some sense, lies the very genius of law. It is law creative and active; it is the first principle…

— Henry David Thoreau

See yonder thin column of smoke curling up through the woods from some invisible farmhouse, the standard raised over some rural homestead……

— Henry David Thoreau

Doubtless, we are as slow to conceive of Paradise as of Heaven, of a perfect natural as of a perfect spiritual world.…

— Henry David Thoreau

Every wild apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a…

— Henry David Thoreau

In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the…

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Henry David Thoreau

I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and…

— Henry David Thoreau

It often happens that a man develops a deeper love and friendship with his pet cat or dog than he does with…

— Henry David Thoreau

“No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature, which holds its life by the same tenure…

— Henry David Thoreau

In the wildest nature, there is not only the material of the most cultivated life, and a sort of anticipation of the…

— Henry David Thoreau

For my own part, I commonly attend more to nature than to man, but any affecting human event may blind our eyes…

— Henry David Thoreau

No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a…

— Henry David Thoreau

I saw deep in the eyes of the animals the human soul look out upon me. I saw where it was born…

— Henry David Thoreau