Henry David Thoreau quotes - page 33

. Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth. (Henry David Thoreau)
How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Say what you have to say, not what you ought. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort, the sort unsaid so far behind the speaker's lips that almost it already lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong he may still properly have other concerns to engage him but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Poverty it is life near the bone, where it is sweetest. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought with these I deal. (Henry David Thoreau)
For an impenetrable shield, stand inside yourself. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
A sentence should read as if its author had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
How earthy old people become mouldy as the grave Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
We cannot well do without our sins they are the highway of our virtue. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Friendship is never established as an understood relation. It is a miracle which requires constant proofs. It is an exercise of the purest imagination and of the rarest faith. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
It is not worth while to go around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves.... View quote
Henry David Thoreau
What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado is Anywhere but where he lives. (Henry David Thoreau)
When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., . . . I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural . . . View quote
Henry David Thoreau
A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
One is wise to cultivate the tree that bears fruit in our soul. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Unjust laws exist shall we be content to obey them. View quote
Henry David Thoreau