Quotes by Thoreau, Henry David

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured and far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak."

Thoreau, Henry David on purpose
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"To watch this crystal globe just sent from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this somber drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another. The gathering in of the clouds with the last rush and dying breath of the wind, and then the regular dripping of twigs and leaves the country over, the impression of inward comfort and Sociableness, the drenched stubble and trees that drop beads on you as you pass, their dim outline seen through the rain on all sides drooping in sympathy with yourself. These are my undisputed territory. This is Nature's English comfort."

Thoreau, Henry David on rain   

"It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes."

Thoreau, Henry David on rank   

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"The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man, -- you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, -- I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that."

Thoreau, Henry David on rebellion
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"I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology."

Thoreau, Henry David on reform   

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"To regret deeply is to live afresh."

Thoreau, Henry David on regret
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"Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it come to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh."

Thoreau, Henry David on regret   

"What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

Thoreau, Henry David on resignation   

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"We live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another."

Thoreau, Henry David on respectability   

"That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest."

Thoreau, Henry David on riches
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"The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue."

Thoreau, Henry David on riches   

"A man sits as many risks as he runs."

Thoreau, Henry David on risk   

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"Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it."

Thoreau, Henry David on rules
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"Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case."

Thoreau, Henry David on rules   

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"Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints."

Thoreau, Henry David on saints   

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"The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly."

Thoreau, Henry David on scholars and scholarship   

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"If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveler, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its entireness."

Thoreau, Henry David on science   

"Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet drink and botanical medicines."

Thoreau, Henry David on seasons   

"We are constantly invited to be who we are."

Thoreau, Henry David on self-appraisal
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"I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limit of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced. Extravagance! it depends on how you are yarded."

Thoreau, Henry David on self-expression   

"To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour."

Thoreau, Henry David on self-improvement
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"Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve."

Thoreau, Henry David on knowledge   

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"I know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection; and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is no part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you."

Thoreau, Henry David on knowledge   

"Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice."

Thoreau, Henry David on knowledge   

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"The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly."

Thoreau, Henry David on sensitivity   

"I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it."

Thoreau, Henry David on silence   

"Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us."

Thoreau, Henry David on silence   

"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail."

Thoreau, Henry David on simplicity   

"We cannot well do without our sins; they are the highway of our virtue."

Thoreau, Henry David on sin   

"After the first blush of sin comes its indifference."

Thoreau, Henry David on sin
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"I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board."

Thoreau, Henry David on sincerity   

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"I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth."

Thoreau, Henry David on sincerity   

"Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed, this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone... I never yet met with, or heard of, a judge who was not a slave of this kind, and so the finest and most unfailing weapon of injustice. He fetches a slightly higher price than the black men only because he is a more valuable slave."

Thoreau, Henry David on slavery   

"What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm."

Thoreau, Henry David on socializing and socialism   

"Sobriety, severity, and self-respect are the foundations of all true sociality."

Thoreau, Henry David on society   

"I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone, I never found the companionable as solitude."

Thoreau, Henry David on solitude
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"I have never found a companion so companionable as solitude."

Thoreau, Henry David on solitude
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"I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion."

Thoreau, Henry David on solitude
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"If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment."

Thoreau, Henry David on solitude   

"However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned."

Thoreau, Henry David on soul