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Henry David Thoreau Quotes about Children

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Kindness to children, love for children, goodness to children-- these are the only investments that never fail.

Kindness to children, love for children, goodness to children-- these are the only investments that never fail.

Henry David Thoreau
Children, Kindness, Failing

All things in this world must be seen with youthful, hopeful eyes.

Henry David Thoreau
Hope, Children, Eye
Henry David Thoreau, John C. Broderick, Robert Sattelmeyer (1981). “Journal”, p.93, Princeton University Press

All men are children, and of one family.

Henry David Thoreau
Children, Men
Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.67

I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings. We do not wish to see children precocious, making great strides in their early years like sprouts, producing a soft and perishable timber, but better if they expand slowly at first, as if contending with difficulties, and so are solidified and perfected. Such trees continue to expand with nearly equal rapidity to extreme old age.

Henry David Thoreau
Children, Thinking, Years
Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.439, Yale University Press

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks - who had the genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked for charity, under the pretense of going à la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Art, Children

I would that our farmers when they cut down a forest felt some of that awe which the old Romans did when they came to thin, or letin the light to, a consecrated grove (lucum conlucare), that is, would believe that it is sacred to some god. The Roman made an expiatory offering, and prayed, Whatever god or goddess thou art to whom this grove is sacred, be propitious to me, my family, and children, etc.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Children, Believe
Henry David Thoreau (1906). “Walden: Or, Life in the Woods”

We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention.

Henry David Thoreau
Children, Thinking, Thoughtful
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.419, Simon and Schuster

If I deny the authority of the State when it presents my tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard, this makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects.

Henry David Thoreau
Children, Men, Liberty
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.82, Penguin

Every child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to stay outdoors, even in wet and cold. It plays house, as well as horse, having an instinct for it...At last we know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than we think.

Henry David Thoreau
Horse, Children, Thinking

The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort, the sort unsaid; so far behind the speaker's lips that almost it already lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated.

Henry David Thoreau
Inspirational, Children, Kindness
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1644, Delphi Classics

Every child begins the world again.

Henry David Thoreau
Baby, Children, Wish
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Walden; Or, Life in the Woods”, p.17, Courier Corporation

Our panaceas cure but few ails, our general hospitals are private and exclusive. We must set up another Hygeia than is now worshiped. Do not the quacks even direct small doses for children, larger for adults, and larger still for oxen and horses? Let us remember that we are to prescribe for the globe itself.

Henry David Thoreau
Horse, Children, Health
Henry David Thoreau (2002). “The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau: Selected and Edited by Lewis Hyde”, p.164, Macmillan

Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Children, Failure
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.61, Simon and Schuster

There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky knolwedge, Grammatica parda, tawny grammar, a kind of mother-wit derived from that same leopard to which I have referred.

Henry David Thoreau
Mother, Children, Knowledge

Certainly, we do not need to be soothed and entertained always like children. He who resorts to the easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than if he took a nap.

Henry David Thoreau
Children, Reading, Naps
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.67, Xist Publishing

Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influencewhich flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.

Henry David Thoreau
Wise, Nature, Children
Henry David Thoreau (2017). “The Most Alive is the Wildest – Thoreau’s Complete Works on Living in Harmony with the Nature: Walden, Walking, Night and Moonlight, The Highland Light, A Winter Walk, The Maine Woods, A Walk to Wachusett, The Landlord, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Autumnal Tints, Wild Apples…”, p.817, e-artnow

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 child should have the advantage of ignorance as well as of knowledge, and is fortunate if he gets his share of neglect and exposure.

Henry David Thoreau
Education, Children, Ignorance
Henry David Thoreau (1999). “Uncommon Learning: Thoreau on Education”, p.65, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I could not undertake to form a nucleus of an institution for the development of infant minds, where none already existed. It would be too cruel.

Henry David Thoreau
Education, Children, Mind
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1692, Delphi Classics

We sometimes meet uncivil men, children of Amazons, who dwell by mountain paths, and are said to be inhospitable to strangers; whose salutation is as rude as the grasp of their brawny hands, and who deal with men as unceremoniously as they are wont to deal with the elements. They need only extend their clearings, and let in more sunlight, to seek out the southern slopes of the hills, from which they may look down on the civil plain or ocean, and temper their diet duly with the cereal fruits, consuming less wild meat and acorns, to become like the inhabitants of cities.

Henry David Thoreau
Children, Ocean, Men
Henry David Thoreau (1862). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. By Henry D. Thoreau”, p.211

If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for maltreating the face of nature committed to their care.

Henry David Thoreau
Children, Care, Faces
Henry David Thoreau, Carol Spenard LaRusso (2012). “The Green Thoreau: America's First Environmentalist on Technology, Possessions, Livelihood, and More”, p.24, New World Library

We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between theilliterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were.

Henry David Thoreau
Children, Knowing, Literature
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.169

Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return-prepared to send beck our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, brother and sister, and wife and child and friends and never see them again,-if you have paid your debts and made your will, and settled your affairs and are a free man, then you are ready for a walk.

Henry David Thoreau
Mother, Brother, Children

I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their cud, and their lives of course yielded no milk.

Henry David Thoreau
Children, Anger, Guilt
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.96, Penguin

Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry,-determine to make a day of it.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Children, Fall
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.153

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