Henry David Thoreau Quotes

I don't really believe in the myth of being poor but happy. At the poorest times in my life, I wasn't happy. I was just hungry.

In 1843, everybody was hungry, unemployed, and conditions were very bad.

The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.

There is but one sufficient excuse for Christians in suffering such evils to exist in prisons in this country, and that is that they are not acquainted with the real state of things.

There are few areas so advantages to the use of slaves as gold mining.

Germany had the misfortune of becoming poisoned, first because of plenty, and then because of want.

Miners produce the bullion. If there is going to be more demand for gold from investors and central banks, where is the gold going to come from? They have to dig it out of the ground and sell it. As the price of gold goes higher, their profit margins increase. So if you are very bullish like I am and think there is going to be a big increase in gold, it's a huge opportunity for miners.

Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is poverty. Ignorance is devastation. Ignorance is tragedy. And ignorance is illness. It all stems from ignorance.

Three were the fates. Poverty that chains; gray drudgery that grinds the hope away, and gaping ignorance that starves the soul.

Groan under gold, yet weep for want of bread.

The California fever is not likely to take us off.... There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold after the manner of the pictures in the geography of diamond washing in Brazil.

Misery and ignorance are always the cause of great evils. Misery is easily excited to anger, and ignorance soon yields to perfidious counsels.

Riches are of little avail in many of the calamities to which mankind are liable.

But to the world no bugbear is so great, As want of figure and a small estate.

It is a kind of blindness--poverty. We can only grope through life when we are poor, hitting and maiming ourselves against every angle.

To see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich. He keeps up appearances, it is true, but I feel the pinch. He gives a revolution as a merchant, whose credit is low, gives a ball.

My empathy for poor people comes from having been one of them for so long, from knowing that their humanity is more complex and that the truths of their suffering have to be told honestly.

There is no greater wealth than wisdom, no greater poverty than ignorance; no greater heritage than culture and no greater support than consultation.

The light is too painful for someone who wants to remain in darkness.

We always say we are equal in front of death, but when you are rich, for example, and you have everybody taking care of you, I think that you suffer much less. It must be much more painful to die when you are poor than when you are rich. But when your heart is broken, you can be rich, poor, whatever - a broken heart, we are all equal in front of it. And I think there is no subject more serious.

He is rich enough who does not want bread.

Poverty ... It is life near the bone, where it is sweetest.

The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want.

... the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.