Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Society

• What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Love, Inspiring, Peace

  Henry David Thoreau, Joseph O. Valentine, Thoreau Society (2001). “Thoreau on Land: Nature's Canvas”, p.79, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Men have become the tools of their tools.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Witty, Work, Humorous

  1854 Walden, or Life in the Woods,'Economy'.

• If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Science, Men

  "Life Without Principle" (1863)

• In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Good Morning, Society, Afternoon

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walking: Top Essays”, p.2, 谷月社

• Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Respect, Self, Sobriety

• Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Society, Politics, Gravel

• I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dead Poets Society, Transcendentalism, Wilderness

  "Walden: Or, Life in the Woods".

• Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dirty, Men, Atheism

  'Walden' (1854) 'The Village'

• If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure, that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Society, Would Be

  "Life Without Principle". The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, Issue 71, (pp. 484-495), 1863.

• As for the dispute about solitude and society, any comparison is impertinent. It is an idling down on the plane at the base of a mountain, instead of climbing steadily to its top.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Climbing, Solitude, Society

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.218, Jazzybee Verlag

• The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Air, Progress

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.137

• I have lately got back to that glorious society called Solitude, where we meet our friends continually, and can imagine the outside world also to be peopled. Yet some of my acquaintance would fain hustle me into the almshouse for the sake of society, as if I were pining for that diet, when I seem to myself a most befriended man, and find constant employment. However, they do not believe a word I say.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Believe, Men, Solitude

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.376, Penguin

• As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prarie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Running, Dog, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Walden: Life in the Woods”, p.105, Gibbs Smith

• I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Thinking, Solitude

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.218

• I have seen more men than usual, lately; and, well as I was acquainted with one, I am surprised to find what vulgar fellows they are.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Society, Usual

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.181, Jazzybee Verlag

• As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most excellent speech finally falls into Silence. Silence is audible to all men, at all times, and in all places. She is when we hear inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly. Creation has not displaced her, but is her visible framework and foil. All sounds are her servants, and purveyors, proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, and earnestly to be sought after.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Fall, Men, Silence

  Henry David Thoreau (1977). “The portable Thoreau”, Penguin

• I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Support, Society

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walking: Top Essays”, p.16, 谷月社

• It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, House, Soul

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.230, Penguin

• I find it, as ever, very unprofitable to have much to do with men. It is sowing the wind, but not reaping even the whirlwind; onlyreaping an unprofitable calm and stagnation. Our conversation is a smooth, and civil, and never-ending speculation merely.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Wind, Society

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.367, Penguin

• In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would bepale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Feet, Society

  Henry David Thoreau (1868). “Excursions”, p.39

• It is a very true and expressive phrase, "He looked daggers at me," for the first pattern and prototype of all daggers must have been a glance of the eye.... It is wonderful how we get about the streets without being wounded by these delicate and glancing weapons, a man can so nimbly whip out his rapier, or without being noticed carry it unsheathed. Yet it is rare that one gets seriously looked at.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Eye, Men, Society

  Henry David Thoreau (1906). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: A week on the Concord and Merrimack rivers”

• In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil,--not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements, and modes of culture only!

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Children, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.408, Penguin

• The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering for want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Doctors, Solitude, Suffering

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1861, Delphi Classics

• I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Past, Design, Society

  Henry David Thoreau, Barry Andrews (2005). “True Harvest: Readings from Henry David Thoreau for Every Day of the Year”, p.83, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

You May Also Like:

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Walt Whitman

Margaret Fuller

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Leo Tolstoy

Herman Melville

Mahatma Gandhi