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Henry David Thoreau Quotes about Friendship - Page 2

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The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. We hate the kindness which we understand.

The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. We hate the kindness which we understand.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Kindness, Hate
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.49, Jazzybee Verlag

I think that Nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Peace, Nature
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1710, Delphi Classics

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

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

It is equally impossible to forget our Friends, and to make them answer to our ideal. When they say farewell, then indeed we beginto keep them company. How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual Friends, that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Cousin, Farewell
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.203, Delphi Classics

We never exchange more than three words with a Friend in our lives on that level to which our thoughts and feelings almost habitually rise.

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

It is impossible to say all that we think, even to our truest Friend. We may bid him farewell forever sooner than complain, for our complaint is too well grounded to be uttered.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Truth, Communication
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.119, Penguin

There is on the earth no institution which Friendship has established; it is not taught by any religion; no scripture contains itsmaxims. It has no temple, nor even a solitary column. There goes a rumor that the earth is inhabited, but the shipwrecked mariner has not seen a footprint on the shore. The hunter has found only fragments of pottery and the monuments of inhabitants.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Bible, Rumor
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.188, Xist Publishing

For a companion, I require one who will make an equal demand on me with my own genius. Such a one will always be rightly tolerant.It is suicide, and corrupts good manners, to welcome any less than this. I value and trust those who love and praise my aspiration rather than my performance. If you would not stop to look at me, but look whither I am looking, and farther, then my education could not dispense with your company.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Suicide, Ambition
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.212, Delphi Classics

Nothing but great antiquity can make graveyards interesting to me. I have no friends there.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Interesting, No Friends
Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.120, Xist Publishing

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Art, Experience
Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.31, Courier Corporation

A man's social and spiritual discipline must answer to his corporeal. He must lean on a friend who has a hard breast, as he wouldlie on a hard bed. He must drink cold water for his only beverage. So he must not hear sweetened and colored words, but pure and refreshing truths. He must daily bathe in truth cold as spring water, not warmed by the sympathy of friends.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Spiritual, Spring
Henry David Thoreau (2017). “HENRY DAVID THOREAU – The Man, The Philosopher & The Trailblazer (Illustrated): Biographies, Memoirs, Autobiographical Books & Personal Letters (Including Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada…)”, p.1302, e-artnow

I love you not as something private and personal, which is my own, but as something universal and worthy of love which I have found.

Henry David Thoreau
Love, Friendship, Found

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

Henry David Thoreau
Life, Friendship, Success
Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.11, Heron Dance Press

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”

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

How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins.

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

What wealth is it to have such friends that we cannot think of them without elevation!

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Real, Thinking
Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.73, Jazzybee Verlag

My friend is one... who take me for what I am.

Henry David Thoreau
Cute, Friendship, Take Me
Henry David Thoreau (1894). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: With Bibliographical Introductions and Full Indexes”

Our actual Friends are but distant relations of those to whom we are pledged.

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

We must love our friend so much that she shall be associated with our purest and holiest thoughts alone.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Purity
Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1142, Delphi Classics

I often accuse my finest acquaintances of an immense frivolity; for, while there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we donot teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual; however, for we do not habitually demand any more of each other.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Honesty, Character

We should never stand upon ceremony with sincerity. We should never cheat and insult and banish one another by our meanness, if there were present the kernel of worth and friendliness. We should not meet thus in haste.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Haste, Insult
Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.243, Penguin

I had but three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship; three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship, Two, Numbers
Walden ch. 6 (1854)

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