Henry David Thoreau Quotes
We go on dating from Cold Fridays and Great Snows; but a little colder Friday, or greater snow would put a period to man's existence on the globe.
One who knew how to appropriate the true value of this world would be the poorest man in it. The poor rich man! all he has is whathe has bought.
Pray, for what do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuviæ; at last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave this to be burned?
It would surpass the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run.
As we looked up in silence to those distant lights, we were reminded that it was a rare imagination which first taught that the stars are worlds, and had conferred a great benefit on mankind.
This is one of those instances in which the individual genius is found to consent, as indeed it always does, at last, with the universal.
We could not help contrasting the equanimity of Nature with the bustle and impatience of man. His words and actions presume alwaysa crisis near at hand, but she is forever silent and unpretending.
Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.
The chickadee and nuthatch are more inspiring society than statesmen and philosophers, and we shall return to these last as to more vulgar companions.
Really to see the sun rise or go down every day, so to relate ourselves to a universal fact, would preserve us sane forever.
Nature is mythical and mystical always, and works with the license and extravagance of genius. She has her luxurious and florid style as well as art.
When I think of the gold-diggers and the Mormons, the slaves and the slave-holders and the flibustiers, I naturally dream of a glorious private life. No, I am not patriotic.
To say that God has given a man many and great talents frequently means that he has brought his heavens down within reach of his hands.
He may travel who can subsist on the wild fruits and game of the most cultivated country.
Ktaadnis an Indian word signifying highest land,... very few, even among backwoodsmen and hunters, have ever climbed it, andit will be a long time before the tide of fashionable travel sets that way.
I suspect that, if you should go to the end of the world, you would find somebody there going farther, as if just starting for home at sundown, and having a last word before he drove off.
The other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our voyaging is only great-circle sailing.
Show me a man who feels bitterly toward John Brown, and let me hear what noble verse he can repeat. He'll be as dumb as if his lips were stone.
Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.
It seems as if the more youthful and impressible streams can hardly resist the numerous invitations and temptations to leave theirnative beds and run down their neighbors' channels.
I suppose that the great questions of "Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge Absolute," which used to be discussed at Concord, are still unsettled.
Friends will be much apart. They will respect more each other's privacy than their communion.
It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump.
Where there is not discernment, the behavior even of the purest soul may in effect amount to coarseness.
If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am constantly doing by being what I am.
The Indian's intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each.
Woe be to the generation that lets any higher faculty in its midst go unemployed.
If labor mainly, or to any considerable degree, serves the purpose of a police, to keep men out of mischief, it indicates a rottenness at the foundation of our community.
Ninety-nine one-hundredths of our lives we are mere hedgers and ditchers, but from time to time we meet with reminders of our destiny.
On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for he would haveheld up his head in their company.
A man may grow rich in Turkey even, if he will be in all respects a good subject of the Turkish government.
To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, andflatter and study effect only more finely than the rest.
Instead of the scream of a fish hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a country to its progress.
To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has left.
A man who has to go to the village to get the news hasn't heard from himself in a long time.
The man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages.
A journal is a repository for all those fragmentary ideas and odd scraps of information that might otherwise be lost and which some day might lead to more "harmonious compositions."