Henry David Thoreau quotes - page 30

It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone. . . . (Henry David Thoreau)
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Where there is a lull in truth an institution springs up. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
I do not know but thoughts written down thus in a journal might be printed in the same form with greater advantage than if the related ones were brought together into separate essays. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Since you are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveler, I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
You must get your living by loving. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? (Henry David Thoreau)
Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
I am a parcel of vain strivings tied By a chance bond together. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Poetry - No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever glorious morning? I do not make an exorbitant demand, surely. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct. (Henry David Thoreau)
The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun's rays. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. View quote
Henry David Thoreau