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Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 90

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It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so.

It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toadstools grow so.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, America, Toadstools
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.190, Graphic Arts Books

The whole of the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour, if not more, which the day did not bring forth.

Henry David Thoreau
Reading, Meditation, Hours
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.67, Xist Publishing

I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Simple, Land
Henry David Thoreau (1995). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods”, p.1, Courier Corporation

Alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe.

Henry David Thoreau
Hoe, Culture, Bogs
Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden”, p.176, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Art may varnish and gild, but it can do no more.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, May, Can Do
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.715, Simon and Schuster

In the wildest nature, there is not only the material of the most cultivated life, and a sort of anticipation of the last result,but a greater refinement already than is ever attained by man.... Nature is prepared to welcome into her scenery the finest work of human art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist never appears in his work.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Nature, Men
Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.335

But the eyes, though they are no sailors, will never be satisfied with any model, however fashionable, which does not answer all the requisitions of art.

Henry David Thoreau
Art, Eye, Doe
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.93, Penguin

A man of fine perceptions is more truly feminine than a merely sentimental woman.

Henry David Thoreau
Women, Perception, Sentimental
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.159, Jazzybee Verlag

Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them.

Henry David Thoreau
Solitude, Independence, Boundaries
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.219

It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, House, Soul
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.230, Penguin

What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Space, Solitude
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.226, Penguin

To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done,and I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment of my domestic arrangements.

Henry David Thoreau
Opportunity, Solitude, Done
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.97

I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither.

Henry David Thoreau
Men, Thinking, Solitude
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.218

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.

Henry David Thoreau
Lonely, Loneliness, Being Alone
Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.88, Cosimo, Inc.

The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down.

Henry David Thoreau
House, Novelists, Fiction
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.66, Simon and Schuster

Seeds, there are seeds enough which need only be stirred in with the soil where they lie, by an inspired voice or pen, to bear fruit of a divine flavor.

Henry David Thoreau
Inspirational, Lying, Voice
Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer (2007). “I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau”, p.8, Yale University Press

Everything that is printed and bound in a book contains some echo at least of the best that is in literature.

Henry David Thoreau
Book, Echoes, Literature
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Thoreau's Book of Quotations”, p.50, Courier Corporation

Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month's labor in the farmer's almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.

Henry David Thoreau
Simple, Men, Style
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.517, Simon and Schuster

Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.

Henry David Thoreau
Philosophy, Past, Criticism
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.280, Simon and Schuster

What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is.

Henry David Thoreau
Knowledge, Men, Virtue
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.274, Penguin

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of head or hands. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in reverie, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.

Henry David Thoreau
Summer, Morning, Taken

We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between theilliterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were.

Henry David Thoreau
Children, Knowing, Literature
Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.169

Methinks I am never quite committed, never wholly the creature of my moods, but always to some extent their critic. My only integral experience is in my vision. I see, perchance, with more integrity than I feel.

Henry David Thoreau
Integrity, Commitment, Vision
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.359, Penguin

A true politeness does not result from any hasty and artificial polishing, it is true, but grows naturally in characters of the right grain and quality, through a long fronting of men and events, and rubbing on good and bad fortune.

Henry David Thoreau
Integrity, Character, Men
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.105, Penguin

I must conclude that Conscience, if that be the name of it, was not given us for no purpose, or for a hindrance. However flattering order and expediency may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy, and we will choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy, and maintain ourselves on this earth, and in this life, as we may, without signing our death-warrant. Let us see if we cannot stay here, where He has put us, on his own conditions. Does not his law reach as far as his light? The expedients of the nations clash with one another: only the absolutely right is expedient for all.

Henry David Thoreau
Integrity, Light, Order
Henry David Thoreau (1906). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: A week on the Concord and Merrimack rivers”

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