David Quotes

It is the art of mankind to polish the world, and every one who works is scrubbing in some part.

Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler still with its slime?

The imagination never forgets; it is a re-membering. It is not foundationless, but most reasonable, and it alone uses all the knowledge of the intellect.

The virtue which we appreciate, we to some extent appropriate.

As in many countries precious metals belong to the crown, so here more precious natural objects of rare beauty should belong to the public.

I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake,I pray?

Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.

We need the tonic of wildness.

The whole body of what is now called moral or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature are the purest morality.

Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there?

My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness!

I always see those of whom I have heard well with a slight disappointment. They are so much better than the great herd, and yet the heavens are not shivered into diamonds over their heads.

Even trees do not die without a groan.

As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.

What exercise is to the body, employment is to the mind and morals.

The tavern will compare favorably with the church.

The life without men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire.

The thoughtful man becomes a hermit in the thoroughfares of the marketplace.

Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature.

Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.

The young pines springing up in the corn-fields from year to year are to me a refreshing fact.

Look not to legislatures and churches for your guidance, nor to any soulless incorporated bodies, but to inspirited or inspired ones.

I have made a short excursion into the new world which the Indian dwells in, or is. He begins where we leave off.

At present our only true names are nicknames.

Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe.

Not secondary to the sun, she gives us his blaze again, Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day... In Heaven queen she is among the spheres; She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure.

There are as many strata at different levels of life as there are leaves in a book. When on the higher levels we can remember the lower levels, but when on the lower we cannot remember the higher.

A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be Uranus, or it may be in the shutter.

Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it.

I have no sense of well-being. There's no chance the well will run dry.

I'm not quite as anonymous as I was.

My life has changed. I'm not walking around any more wishing I wasn't me, which was the case at one time.

If I was going onstage, of course I would talk about it. How could I not?

It requires as much reflection and wisdom to know what is not to be put into a sermon, as what is.

There is nothing that could be revealed about a pastor that has not already been covered by the blood of Jesus

Our need is so desperate an idea, a thing, a law can't help us. It took one thing, the gift of gifts, God in the flesh, to rescue us.

Morality only is eternal. All the rest is balloon and bubble from the cradle to the grave.

I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune.

Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.

There can't be a quarrel without two parties, and I won't be one. I will be a friend to you in spite of you. So now you know what you've got to expect

It will be your duty, and it will be your pleasure too to estimate her (as you chose her) by the qualities that she has, and not by the qualities she may not have.

We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.

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.

The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen as children always do I believe when we go back to them

The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.

The source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think....Let us dare to read, think, speak, write.

The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.