Henry David Thoreau Quotes
Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. Why, nature is but another name for health.
I am resolved that I will not through humility become the devil's attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word for the truth.
In the love of narrow souls I make many short voyages but in vain-I find no sea room-but in great souls I sail before the wind without a watch, and never reach the shore.
We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always.
Water is a pioneer which the settler follows, taking advantage of its improvements.
Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.
The best poets, after all, exhibit only a tame and civil side of nature. They have not seen the west side of any mountain.
He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruit of his riches, who summer and winter forever can find delight in his own thoughts.
It is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His natural foe is the government that drills him.
There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography.
Writing may be either the record of a deed or a deed. It is nobler when it is a deed.
He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behaviour as well as application.
The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.
Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God.
It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work.
There must be the... generating force of Love behind every effort destined to be successful.
Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.
Stuff a cold and starve a cold are but two ways. They are the two practices, both always in full blast. Yet you must take the advice of the one school as if there was no other.
Your scheme must be the framework of the universe; all other schemes will soon be ruins.
Expect no trivial truth from me, unless I am on the witness- stand. I will come as near to lying as you can drive a coach and four.
There is none who does not lie hourly in the respect he pays to false appearance.
If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends!
Beside some philosophers of larger vision, Carlyle stands like an honest, half-despairing boy, grasping at some details only of their world systems.
If you are a seer, whenever you meet a man you will see all that he owns, ay, and much that he pretends to disown, behind him.
The front aspect of great thoughts can only be enjoyed by those who stand on the side whence they arrive.
The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience.
It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so.
The fact is, mental philosophy is very like Poverty, which, you know, begins at home; and indeed, when it goes abroad, it is poverty itself.
When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis.
We make needless ado about capital punishment,--taking lives, when there is no life to take.
So soon did we, wayfarers, begin to learn that man's life is rounded with the same few facts, the same simple relations everywhere, and it is vain to travel to find it new.
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.
Surely the writer is to address a world of laborers, and such therefore must be his own discipline.
Let us consider under what disadvantages Science has hitherto labored before we pronounce thus confidently on her progress.
If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality.
We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,--and then we can hardly see anything else.
The scholar is not apt to make his most familiar experience come gracefully to the aid of his expression.
The necessity of labor and conversation with many men and things to the scholar is rarely well remembered.
