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Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 84

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None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

Henry David Thoreau
Wise, Poverty, Should
Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Thoreau on Nature: Sage Words on Finding Harmony with the Natural World”, p.26, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?

Henry David Thoreau
Demon, Rebellion, Transcendental
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Walden; Or, Life in the Woods”, p.6, Courier Corporation

Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a west as distant and as fair as that into which the Sun goes down. He appears to migrate westward daily and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those mountain ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which were last gilded by his rays.

Henry David Thoreau
Dream, Sunset, Night
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.165, Simon and Schuster

Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.

Henry David Thoreau
Adventure, Dawn, Care
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.124, Simon and Schuster

Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted or enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.

Henry David Thoreau
Dirty, Wine, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Walden; Or, Life in the Woods”, p.15, Courier Corporation

No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes: yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Clothes, Anxiety
Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience: Top American Literary”, p.13, 谷月社

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while 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, Eternity Of Life, Fishing
Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.64, Cosimo, Inc.

As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.

Henry David Thoreau
Differences, Jail, Long
1854 Walden, or Life in the Woods,'Where I Lived, and What I Lived For'.

This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore.

Henry David Thoreau
Delight, Body, Evening
Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience: Top American Literary”, p.80, 谷月社

My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting.

Henry David Thoreau
Flower, Yesterday, Bird
Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden: 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.109, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Don't get to the end of your life and realize you have never lived.

Henry David Thoreau
Realizing, Ends

The true and not despairing Friend will address his Friend in some such terms as these. "I never asked thy leave to let me love thee,--I have a right. I love thee not as something private and personal, which is your own, but as something universal and worthy of love, which I have found. O, how I think of you! You are purely good, --you are infinitely good. I can trust you forever. I did not think that humanity was so rich. Give me an opportunity to live.

Henry David Thoreau
Thinking, Opportunity, Giving
Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.408, Modern Library

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.

Henry David Thoreau
Dream, Time, Memories
1841 Journal entry, 19 Feb.

How earthy old people become --moldy 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.

Henry David Thoreau
Time, People, Age
Henry David Thoreau (1906). “Journal”

I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak.

Henry David Thoreau
Nature, Afternoon, Shrubs
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2713, Delphi Classics

The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot.

Henry David Thoreau
Knowledge, Men, Support
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.41, Courier Corporation

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. Often the poor man is not cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune.

Henry David Thoreau
Dirty, Men, Giving
Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.78, Modern Library

The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, - so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.

Henry David Thoreau
Lying, Rain, Lakes
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.560, Delphi Classics

A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East.

Henry David Thoreau
Flower, Book, Reading
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.405, Penguin

Our last deed, like the young of the land crab, wends its way to the sea of cause and effect as soon as born, and makes a drop there to eternity.

Henry David Thoreau
Time, Sea, Land

I fear that I have not got much to say about Canada, not having seen much; what I got by going to Canada was a cold.

Henry David Thoreau
Sarcastic, Canada, Cold
1866 A Yankee in Canada.

I have heard of many going astray even in the village streets, when the darkness was so thick you could cut it with a knife, as the saying is...

Henry David Thoreau
Crazy, Cutting, Knives
Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience: Top American Literary”, p.106, 谷月社

Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being so rapidly added to the sum of human experience, that it appears as if the theorizer would always be in arrears, and were doomed forever to arrive at imperfect conclusion; but the power to perceive a law is equally rare in all ages of the world, and depends but little on the number of facts observed.

Henry David Thoreau
Science, Law, Numbers
Henry David Thoreau, Eva Mae Burkett, Joyce S. Steward (1989). “Thoreau on writing”, Univ Pub Assoc

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

Henry David Thoreau
Travel, Home, Tourism
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.156, Courier Corporation

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

Henry David Thoreau
Practice, Wish, Transcendentalism
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.3143, Delphi Classics

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