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Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 68

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One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense.

One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense.

Henry David Thoreau
Mistake, Errors, Long
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2114, Delphi Classics

We should endeavor practically in our lives to correct all the defects which our imagination detects.

Henry David Thoreau
Imagination, Reform, Should
Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1865). “Letters to Various Persons”, p.49

So far as my experience goes, travelers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the difficulty is imaginary; for what's the hurry?

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Evil, Optimism
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.101, Penguin

The Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots.

Henry David Thoreau
Skins, Leopards, Spots
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1710, Delphi Classics

Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts - a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Marine, Army
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.198, Graphic Arts Books

A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky.

Henry David Thoreau
Lakes, Air, Land
Henry David Thoreau (1995). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods”, p.123, Courier Corporation

I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?

Henry David Thoreau
Fashion, Power, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Civil Disobedience: Resistance to Civil Government”, p.26, The Floating Press

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Nature, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.246, Delphi Classics

The world laughs in flowers.

Henry David Thoreau
Flower, Laughing, World

Our thoughts are epochs in our lives; all else is but as a journal of the winds that blow while we are here.

Henry David Thoreau
Inspirational, Life, Blow

The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but as I love literature and to some extent the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.

Henry David Thoreau
Government, Wish, Literature
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.226, Graphic Arts Books

Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction - a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the muse.

Henry David Thoreau
Work, Home, Night
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.191, Simon and Schuster

The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God.

Henry David Thoreau
God, Men, Consciousness
Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.348

When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country [Mexico] is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.

Henry David Thoreau
Country, Military, Army

The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.

Henry David Thoreau
May, Youth, Plant

The order of things should be reversed; the seventh day should be the day of toil...and the other six his Sabbath of the affections and the soul, in which to range this widerspread garden, and drink in the soft influences and sublime revelations of Nature.

Henry David Thoreau
Garden, Order, Soul

As far back as I can remember I have unconsciously referred to the experiences of a previous state of existence.

Henry David Thoreau
Remember, Reincarnation, States
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.47, Courier Corporation

To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common sense,it contains only enduring and essential truth, the I and you, the here and there, the now and then, being omitted. Either time or rare wisdom writes it.

Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom, Truth, Writing
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.42, Xist Publishing

Summer passes into autumn in some unimaginable point of time, like the turning of a leaf.

Henry David Thoreau
Summer, Autumn, Leafs
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.252, Delphi Classics

Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them - that it was a vain endeavor?

Henry David Thoreau
Karma, Men, Trying
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.357, Penguin

I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety.

Henry David Thoreau
Thanksgiving, Grateful, Existence
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.373, Penguin

In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin.

Henry David Thoreau
Truth, Joy, Perception
Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Thoreau on Nature: Sage Words on Finding Harmony with the Natural World”, p.41, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

My friend is one who takes me for what I am. A stranger takes me for something else than what I am. . . . 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. It brings men together in crowds and mobs in bar-rooms and elsewhere, but it does not deserve the name of virtue.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Lying, Men
Henry David Thoreau, Bradford Torrey, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (1906). “Journal, ed. by Bradford Torrey, 1837-1846, 1850-Nov. 3, 1861”

What is most striking in the Maine wilderness is the continuousness of the forest, with fewer open intervals or glades than you had imagined. Except the few burnt lands, the narrow intervals on the rivers, the bare tops of the high mountains, and the lakes and streams, the forest is uninterrupted.

Henry David Thoreau
Lakes, Land, Rivers
Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.80

While my friend was my friend, he flattered me, and I never heard the truth from him. When he became my enemy, he shot it to me on a poisoned arrow.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Arrows, Enemy
Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.42, Yale University Press

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