Quotes by Thoreau, Henry David

"I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors."

Thoreau, Henry David on advice
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"Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something."

Thoreau, Henry David on advice
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"Live your life, do your work, then take your hat."

Thoreau, Henry David on death
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"As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution."

Thoreau, Henry David on deeds and good deeds
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"If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life."

Thoreau, Henry David on deeds and good deeds
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"If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?"

Thoreau, Henry David on desire
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"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

Thoreau, Henry David on desperation
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"I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark."

Thoreau, Henry David on determination
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"Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit."

Thoreau, Henry David on disease
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"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."

Thoreau, Henry David on distrust
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"There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect."

Thoreau, Henry David on doubt
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"Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe."

Thoreau, Henry David on doubt
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"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

Thoreau, Henry David on dream
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"If one advances confidently in the directions of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

Thoreau, Henry David on dream
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"Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake."

Thoreau, Henry David on dream
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"For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully, though I never received payment for it."

Thoreau, Henry David on duty   

"You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds."

Thoreau, Henry David on eccentricity
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"Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?"

Thoreau, Henry David on editing and editors   

"How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?"

Thoreau, Henry David on education
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"What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook."

Thoreau, Henry David on education
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"I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well."

Thoreau, Henry David on egotism
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"The heart is forever inexperienced."

Thoreau, Henry David on emotions
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"The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."

Thoreau, Henry David on enlightenment
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"In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages. Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it, but when I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away but eternity remains."

Thoreau, Henry David on eternity
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"Being is the great explainer."

Thoreau, Henry David on existence
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"Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced."

Thoreau, Henry David on experience
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"It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone. It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar."

Thoreau, Henry David on exploration   

"The eye is the jewel of the body."

Thoreau, Henry David on eyes
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"My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologies. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought -- with these I deal."

Thoreau, Henry David on facts   

"Men are born to succeed, not to fail."

Thoreau, Henry David on failure
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"We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not."

Thoreau, Henry David on faith
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"Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants."

Thoreau, Henry David on faith   

"The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures."

Thoreau, Henry David on faith   

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"The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness."

Thoreau, Henry David on faith
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"Even the best things are not equal to their fame."

Thoreau, Henry David on fame
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"Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor."

Thoreau, Henry David on farming and farmers   

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"By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber."

Thoreau, Henry David on farming and farmers   

"We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same."

Thoreau, Henry David on fashion
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"People die of fright and live of confidence."

Thoreau, Henry David on fear
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"The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled."

Thoreau, Henry David on fishing