Authors:

Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 58

All Quotes Achievement Acting Adventure Age Aids Alcohol Ambition Anxiety Appreciation Army Art Atheism Atmosphere Attitude Authority Autumn Beach Beauty Beer Being Alone Being Yourself Bible Birth Bones Bravery Business Caring Change Character Charity Chastity Children Christ Christianity Church Civil Disobedience College Commitment Common Sense Communication Community Confidence Conformity Confusion Consciousness Constitution Contemplation Cooking Copper Country Courage Creation Creativity Criticism Culture Curiosity Darkness Death Deception Democracy Depression Design Desire Destiny Determination Devil Disappointment Discipline Dogma Doubt Drinking Duty Dying Earth Eating Ecology Economics Economy Education Effort Encouraging Energy Enthusiasm Environment Eternity Ethics Evil Excellence Exercise Expectations Experience Failing Failure Faith Fame Family Farming Fashion Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Finding Yourself Flying Focus Food Freedom Friends Friendship Funny Future Gardening Generosity Genius Giving Giving Up God Gold Good Deeds Good Morning Goodbye Goodness Gossip Grace Graduation Gratitude Greatness Greed Greek Grief Grieving Growth Happiness Hard Work Harmony Hate Healing Health Heart Heaven Heroism History Home Honesty Honor Hope House Human Nature Humanity Humility Hunger Hunting Hypocrisy Ignorance Imagination Immortality Imperfection Impulse Independence Individuality Injustice Innocence Insanity Inspiration Inspirational Inspiring Integrity Intelligence Jesus Journalism Journey Joy Judging Justice Kindness Knowledge Labor Language Latin Laughter Learning Liberty Life Listening Literature Live Life Loneliness Losing Loss Love Luck Lying Manhood Mankind Marriage Meditation Memories Mental Health Mercy Mindfulness Money Moon Morality Morning Motivation Motivational Mountain Music Nature Navy Observation Office Opportunity Optimism Overcoming Past Patience Patriotism Peace Perception Perfection Perseverance Personality Perspective Philanthropy Philosophy Physics Pleasure Poetry Police Politics Positive Poverty Power Praise Prayer Pride Privacy Progress Property Purity Purpose Quality Rain Reading Reality Rebellion Reflection Regret Reincarnation Religion Reputation Respect Responsibility Revelations Revolution Risk Running Sabbath Sacrifice Sad Sadness Sailing Sanity School Science Self Esteem Self Reliance Self Respect Serenity Silence Simple Life Simplicity Sin Sincerity Singing Skins Slavery Sleep Sloth Social Responsibility Society Solitude Son Sorrow Soul Sports Spring Strength Struggle Students Study Style Success Suffering Summer Sunrise Sunshine Sympathy Tea Teaching Technology Temperance Thanksgiving Time Today Tradition Tragedy Transcendentalism Travel True Love Trust Truth Understanding Universe Violence Virtue Vision Volunteer Voting Waiting Walking Wall War Water Weakness Wealth Weed Wilderness Wine Winter Wisdom Work Writing Yoga Youth
We have used up all our inherited freedom, like the young bird the albumen in the egg. It is not an era of repose. If we would save our lives, we must fight for them.

We have used up all our inherited freedom, like the young bird the albumen in the egg. It is not an era of repose. If we would save our lives, we must fight for them.

Henry David Thoreau
Freedom, Fighting, Eggs
Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.132, David M Gross

There are times when we have had enough even of our Friends.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Had Enough, Enough
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.194, Xist Publishing

To say that a man is your Friend means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Mean, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.110, Penguin

Nature has left nothing to the mercy of man.

Henry David Thoreau
Nature, Men, Mercy
Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.455, Yale University Press

What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own.

Henry David Thoreau
Civilization, Wildness
Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.192, David M Gross

Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild - not tamed and broken by society.

Henry David Thoreau
Independent, Men, Broken
Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.66, David M Gross

Trench says a wild man is a willed man. Well, then, a man of will who does what he wills or wishes, a man of hope and of the future tense, for not only the obstinate is willed, but far more the constant and persevering. The obstinate man, properly speaking, is one who will not. The perseverance of the saints is positive willedness, not a mere passive willingness. The fates are wild, for they will; and the Almighty is wild above all, as fate is.

Henry David Thoreau
Perseverance, Fate, Men
Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.179, Yale University Press

What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties!

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Angel, Men
Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.144, Yale University Press

To a small man every greater is an exaggeration.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Exaggeration Is, Small Man
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.95, Simon and Schuster

Oh, one world at a time!

Henry David Thoreau
World, Miscellaneous

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way.

Henry David Thoreau
Fancy Cars, Anxiety, Heaven
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.60

Nature has many scenes to exhibit, and constantly draws a curtain over this part or that. She is constantly repainting the landscape and all surfaces, dressing up some scene for our entertainment. Lately we had a leafy wilderness; now bare twigs begin to prevail, and soon she will surprise us with a mantle of snow. Some green she thinks so good for our eyes that, like blue, she never banishes it entirely from our eyes, but has created evergreens.

Henry David Thoreau
Eye, Winter, Thinking
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2799, Delphi Classics

As far as our noblest hardwood forests are concerned, the animals, especially squirrels and jays, are our greatest and almost only benefactors. It is to them that we owe this gift. It is not in vain that the squirrels live in or about every forest tree, or hollow log, and every wall and heap of stones.

Henry David Thoreau
Wall, Animal, Squirrels
David R. Foster, Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Thoreau's Country: Journey through a Transformed Landscape”, p.147, Harvard University Press

I see in many places little barberry bushes just come up densely in the cow-dung, like young apple trees, the berries having been eaten by the cows. Here they find manure and an open space for the first year at least, when they are not choked by grass or weeds. In this way, evidently, many of these clumps of barberries are commenced.

Henry David Thoreau
Weed, Years, Apples
David R. Foster, Henry David Thoreau (1999). “Thoreau's country: journey through a transformed landscape”, Harvard Univ Pr

I once found a kernel of corn in the middle of a deep wood by Walden, tucked in behind a lichen on a pine, about as high as my head, either by a crow or a squirrel. It was a mile at least from any corn-field.

Henry David Thoreau
Cutting, Squirrels, Crow
Henry David Thoreau, Carl Bode (1967). “The best of Thoreau's journals”, Southern Illinois Univ Pr

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.

Henry David Thoreau
Time, Fishing, Sublime

For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?

Henry David Thoreau
Bible, Light, Years
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.211, Graphic Arts Books

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.

Henry David Thoreau
Self, Years, Payment

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

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Feelings, May
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2044, Delphi Classics

If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Henry David Thoreau
Truth, Years, Giving

The commonest and cheapest sounds, as the barking of a dog, produce the same effect on fresh and healthy ears that the rarest music does. It depends on your appetite for sound. Just as a crust is sweeter to a healthy appetite than confectionery to a pampered or diseased one.

Henry David Thoreau
Dog, Healthy, Sound
Henry David Thoreau, Wesley T. Mott, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (2005). “Bonds of Affection: Thoreau on Dogs and Cats”, p.32, Univ of Massachusetts Press

Our circumstances answer to our expectations and the demand of our natures.

Henry David Thoreau
Expectations, Answers, Demand
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.209, Xist Publishing

I thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten today, that I might go a- fishing. That's the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have learned.

Henry David Thoreau
Lakes, Sea, Fishing
Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.219, Modern Library

Late in the afternoon we passed a man on the shore fishing with a long birch pole.... The characteristics and pursuits of various ages and races of men are always existing in epitome in every neighborhood. The pleasures of my earliest youth have become the inheritance of other men. This man is still a fisher, and belongs to an era in which I myself have lived.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Lakes, Race

Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right... Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

Henry David Thoreau
Mean, Men, Thinking
Civil Disobedience (1849)

You May Also Like: