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Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 88

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Friendship is the unspeakable joy and blessing that result to two or more individuals who from constitution sympathize. Such natures are liable to no mistakes, but will know each other through thick and thin. Between

Friendship is the unspeakable joy and blessing that result to two or more individuals who from constitution sympathize. Such natures are liable to no mistakes, but will know each other through thick and thin. Between two by nature alike and fitted to sympathize, there is no veil, and there can be no obstacle. Who are the estranged? Two friends explaining.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Mistake, Blessing
Henry David Thoreau (1973). “Winter: From the Journal of Henry David Thoreau”

It is not when I am going to meet him, but when I am just turning away and leaving him alone, that I discover what God is. I say, God. I am not sure that that is the name. You will know what I mean.

Henry David Thoreau
God, Mean, Names
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.361, Penguin

Simplicity is the law of Nature for man as well as for flowers. When the tapestry (corolla) of the nuptial bed (calyx) is excessive, luxuriant, it is unproductive. The fertile flowers are single, not double.

Henry David Thoreau
Flower, Men, Law
Henry David Thoreau (1949). “Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”

Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge college is as solitary as a dervis in the desert.

Henry David Thoreau
College, Men, Space
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.83, Simon and Schuster

As all curves have reference to their centres or foci, so all beauty of character has reference to the soul, and is a graceful gesture of recognition or waving of the body toward it.

Henry David Thoreau
Character, Curves, Focus
Henry David Thoreau, Robert Lawrence France, Thoreau Society (2001). “Thoreau on Water: Reflecting Heaven”, p.55, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There may be something petty in a refined taste; it easily degenerates into effeminacy. It does not consider the broadest use. It is not content with simple good and bad, and so is fastidious and curious or nice only.

Henry David Thoreau
Nice, Simple, Doe
Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.29, David M Gross

Wealth cannot purchase any great private solace or convenience. Riches are only the means of sociality.

Henry David Thoreau
Mean, Riches, Wealth
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2109, Delphi Classics

When some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered yes-- remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education-- make them hunters.

Henry David Thoreau
Boys, Hunting, Hunters
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.152, Xist Publishing

But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire.... The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Poetry, Genius
Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Journeys, Adventures & Life in Harmony with Nature – 6 Book Collection (Illustrated): Including Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada & Canoeing in the Wilderness - North American Highlands Series”, p.231, e-artnow

When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of the world, but none of the recording, a mere accumulated, and not trulycumulative treasure; where immortal works stand side by side with anthologies which did not survive their month, and cobweb and mildew have already spread from these to the binding of those; and happily I am reminded of what poetry is,--I perceive that Shakespeare and Milton did not foresee into what company they were to fall. Alas! that so soon the work of a true poet should be swept into such a dust-hole!

Henry David Thoreau
Fall, Dust, Poetry
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.256, Delphi Classics

Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been inconceivably near to it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a vaster receding thought.

Henry David Thoreau
Inspirational, Miracle, Poetry
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.246, Delphi Classics

There is all the poetry in the world in a name. It is a poem which the mass of men hear and read. What is poetry in the common sense, but a hearing of such jingling names? I want nothing better than a good word. The name of a thing may easily be more than the thing itself to me.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Names, Common Sense

The night in prison was novel and interesting enough.... I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.

Henry David Thoreau
Wall, Night, Men

You may rely on it that you have the best of me in my books, and that I am not worth seeing personally, the stuttering, blunderingclod-hopper that I am. Even poetry, you know, is in one sense an infinite brag and exaggeration. Not that I do not stand on all that I have written,--but what am I to the truth I feebly utter?

Henry David Thoreau
Truth, Book, Poetry

I know very well what Goethe meant when he said that he never had a chagrin but he made a poem out of it. I have altogether too much patience of this kind.

Henry David Thoreau
Disappointment, Poetry, Too Much
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.359, Penguin

If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly.... You are paid for being something less than a man. The state does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe.

Henry David Thoreau
Wine, Men, Poetry
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.216, Graphic Arts Books

The poet who walks by moonlight is conscious of a tide in his thought which is to be referred to lunar influence.

Henry David Thoreau
Inspirational, Moon, Poetry
Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Excursions and Poems : The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume V (of 20)”, p.289, HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

It is remarkable that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or acknowledge the personality of God. Some Earl of Bridgewater, thinking it better late than never, has provided for it in his will. It is a sad mistake.

Henry David Thoreau
God, Mistake, Thinking
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.71, Delphi Classics

The Iliad represents no creed nor opinion, and we read it with a rare sense of freedom and irresponsibility, as if we trod on native ground, and were autochthones of the soil.

Henry David Thoreau
Religion, Soil, Opinion
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.294, Courier Corporation

Yet the New Testament treats of man and man's so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested solely in man's religious or moral nature, or in man even.

Henry David Thoreau
Bible, Spiritual, Religious
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.96, Penguin

Really, there is no infidelity, nowadays, so great as that which prays, and keeps the Sabbath, and rebuilds the churches. The sealer of the South Pacific preaches a truer doctrine.

Henry David Thoreau
Hypocrisy, Infidelity, Religion
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.97, Penguin

Heal yourselves, doctors; by God I live.

Henry David Thoreau
Health, Doctors, Religion
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.564, Simon and Schuster

Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns.

Henry David Thoreau
God, Wrath, Hymns
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.65, Delphi Classics

Let no one think that I do not love the old ministers. They were, probably, the best men in their generation, and they deserve that their biographies should fill the pages of the town histories. If I could but hear the "glad tidings" of which they tell, and which, perchance, they heard, I might write in a worthier strain than this.

Henry David Thoreau
Writing, Men, Thinking
Henry David Thoreau (2008). “Cape Cod: Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Religion, Purity
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.164, Jazzybee Verlag

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