The hero obeys his own law, the Christian his, the lover and friend theirs; they are to some extent different codes.
—Journal, 1 February 1852The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have.
—WaldenThe indecent haste and grossness with which our food is swallowed, have cast a disgrace on the very act of eating itself.
—Journal, 16 July 1845The laborer whose body is weary does not require the same food with the scholar whose brain is weary.
—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 2 May 1848The land seemed to grow fairer as we withdrew from it.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversThe language of friendship is not words but meanings. It is an intelligence above language.
—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversThe law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free. They are the lovers of law and order, who observe the law when the government breaks it.
—"Resistance to Civil Government"The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats.
—WaldenThe life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?
—WaldenThe love is faint-hearted and short-lived that is contented with the past history of its object. It does not prepare the soil to bear new crops lustier than the old.
—Journal, 14 March 1842The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.
—Journal, 7 January 1857