Quotes by Thoreau, Henry David

"Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them."

Thoreau, Henry David on thoughts and thinking   

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"Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It's thin current slides away, but eternity remains."

Thoreau, Henry David on time   

"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity."

Thoreau, Henry David on time
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"You cannot kill time without injuring eternity."

Thoreau, Henry David on time   

"But lo! men have become the tools of their tools."

Thoreau, Henry David on tools   

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"That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest?"

Thoreau, Henry David on trains   

"He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience."

Thoreau, Henry David on travel   

"Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better."

Thoreau, Henry David on travel   

"I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere."

Thoreau, Henry David on trust   

"Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love."

Thoreau, Henry David on truth
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"It takes two to speak truth -- one to speak, and another to hear."

Thoreau, Henry David on truth   

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."

Thoreau, Henry David on truth   

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"We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!"

Thoreau, Henry David on understanding   

"The universe is wider than our views of it."

Thoreau, Henry David on universe   

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"One farmer says to me, You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with; and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle."

Thoreau, Henry David on vegetarianism   

"I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized."

Thoreau, Henry David on vegetarianism   

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"That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess."

Thoreau, Henry David on virtue   

"There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man."

Thoreau, Henry David on virtue   

"I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision."

Thoreau, Henry David on vision   

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"All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong."

Thoreau, Henry David on voting   

"The savage in man is never quite eradicated."

Thoreau, Henry David on war   

"I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul."

Thoreau, Henry David on war   

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."

Thoreau, Henry David on wealth
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"Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul."

Thoreau, Henry David on wealth   

"Wealth is the ability to fully experience life."

Thoreau, Henry David on wealth   

"In wildness is the preservation of the world."

Thoreau, Henry David on wilderness   

"We need the tonic of wildness, to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground."

Thoreau, Henry David on wilderness   

"Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer."

Thoreau, Henry David on winter   

"It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things."

Thoreau, Henry David on wisdom   

"Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit."

Thoreau, Henry David on wit   

"It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady."

Thoreau, Henry David on women   

"The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement."

Thoreau, Henry David on words
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"Men have become the tools of their trade."

Thoreau, Henry David on work   

"The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure."

Thoreau, Henry David on work   

"There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living."

Thoreau, Henry David on work   

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"Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now."

Thoreau, Henry David on work   

"The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit -- not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviate from their graves."

Thoreau, Henry David on world   

"All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear."

Thoreau, Henry David on worth   

"A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure."

Thoreau, Henry David on writers and writing   

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"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."

Thoreau, Henry David on writers and writing