More from Henry David Thoreau

  1. I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character - his immortal life; and so it becomes your cause wh…
  2. Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.
  3. I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable. We preserve …
  4. Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.
  5. I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates…
  6. There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented.
  7. It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agr…
  8. The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. I am surprised, as well as d…

All Henry David Thoreau quotes