The 20 best quotes by Henry David Thoreau

We review the work of one of the main references of American literature.

Henry David Thoreau (Massachusetts, 1817 - 1862) was a writer, philosopher and thinker who had a great impact on the intellectual world of his time and later generations.

His most acclaimed books, Walden (1854) and Civil Disobedience (1848), in which he brilliantly exposed different moral foundations that would take root in the leftist currents of the following decades.

Thoreau's famous quotes and quotations

During his lifetime, Thoreau opposed American slavery and promulgated very advanced ideas for that time of war, violence and scarcity.violence and scarcity. In fact, such central figures in the history of the United States as Martin Luther King himself acknowledged being strongly influenced by the figure of the writer.

In today's article we are going to know the best phrases of Henry David Thoreau, to get closer to his thought and his exceptional prose.

1. You are more aware than before of what is important and what is trivial. The future is worth waiting for!

A positive phrase from the great Henry David Thoreau.

2. There are moments when all the accumulated anxiety and effort is soothed in the infinite indolence and repose of nature.

There are different types of anxiety and, as Thoreau says, sometimes we are able to mitigate it in a true phase of catharsis.

3. I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately; to face only the facts of life and see if I could learn what it had to teach. I wanted to live deeply and discard everything that was not life.... So that I would not realize, at the moment of death, that I had not lived.

One of those philosophical quotes that invite us to reflect.

4. The law never made men one iota more just; and, because of their respect for them, even the best disposed become daily agents of injustice.

In this quotation he reveals his anarchist side.

5. What a man thinks of himself, this is what determines, or rather indicates, his destiny.

Our self-concept is more powerful than we usually think.

6. Mathematics does not lie, what there are is a lot of lying mathematicians.

Statistics can always lead to erroneous conclusions if we do not know how to interpret them properly.

7. The richest person is the one whose pleasures are the cheapest.

An ode to austerity very typical of the great Thoreau.

8. Almost all people live life in silent despair.

A sad phrase that contains a truth that endures in our times.

9. How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not yet risen to live.

A reflection on the writing profession. If you have not experimented, your texts can be totally empty.

10. There is more religion in man's science than science in his religion.

What does science think of religious people?

11. Most men, even in this comparatively free country, are so much occupied with unnecessary artifices and absurdly mediocre labors, that they have no time left to reap the best fruits of life.

Another quote from Henry David Thoreau about superficiality and ostentatious living.

12. Nine-tenths of wisdom comes from being judicious in time.

Famous phrase where he explains his notion of responsibility.

• Recommended article: "89 phrases about intelligence and knowledge".

13. Heaven could be defined as the place that men avoid.

A thought that induces us to reflect on good and evil.

14. There is no worse odor than that given off by corrupted goodness.

When a good man is corrupted, the honor he has built up over years of honesty vanishes with no possibility of amendment.

15. Is democracy, as we know it, the last possible achievement in government? Is it not possible to go a step further toward the recognition and organization of the rights of man? There can never be a truly free and enlightened State until it recognizes the individual as the independent superior power from which his rights and authority derive, and consequently treats him accordingly.

A political reflection that has generated rivers of ink from the 19th century to the present day.

16. It is as difficult to see oneself as it is to look back without turning around.

Our capacity for self-reflection is certainly limited.

17. No human being, past the irrational age of childhood, will consciously want to kill any creature that sustains its life from the same earth as he does.

An animalistic phrase that may not be surprising today, but in its time it was a radical view of the life of living beings.

18. Time is nothing but the current in which I am fishing.

One of these reflections on time that leave us thinking for hours.

19. The light that blinds our eyes is darkness for us. Only the day dawns for which we are awake. There are yet many days to dawn. He alone is but a morning star.

Looking for philosophical quotes? This famous Thoreau quote is one to frame.

20. If you cannot convince a person of the wrong he is doing, try to do the right thing. People believe only what they see.

Ethics is preached by day-to-day actions.