Henry David Thoreau quotes - page 25

That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest. (Henry David Thoreau)
I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
The virtue which we appreciate, we to some extent appropriate. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
When I would re-create myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter as a sacred place, a Sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their lives like servants. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the lay, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I'm sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Life is grand, and so are its environments of Past and Future. Would the face of nature be so serene and beautiful if mans destiny were not equally so. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage. (Henry David Thoreau)
Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but last fruits also. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador a greater wildness than in some recess of Concord. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
All that man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind is in some shape or other to tell the story of his loveto sing, and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Love does not analyze its object. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
We do not enjoy poetry unless we know it to be poetry. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest. (Henry David Thoreau)
Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Only the defeated and deserters go to war. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Oh, one world at a time. View quote
Henry David Thoreau