Henry David Thoreau Ss Quotations

Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought, go about doing good.

We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been times when our friends' thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be.

For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once done well is done forever.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.

The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument.

Faith never makes a confession.

He who parades his virtues seldom leads the parade. He who puts up with insult invites injury. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present.

Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present.

Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself.

Can we not do without the society of our gossip a little while, - have our own thoughts to cheer us?

It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the restless class of Reformers. What if these grievances exist? So do you and I.

There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone; and to strike at the root of the matter at once,--for the root is faith,--I am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say.

I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society.

We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty.

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

We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It is the color of colors. This plant speaks to our blood....What a perfect maturity it arrives at! It is the emblem of a successful life concluded by a death not premature, which is an ornament to Nature. What if we were to mature as perfectly, root and branch, glowing in the midst of our decay, like the poke!

Instead of the scream of a fish hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a country to its progress.

Truly, our greatest blessings are very cheap.

We never conceive the greatness of our fates.

The most primitive places left with us are the swamps, where the spruce still grows shaggy with usnea.

Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there?

I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching the lapse of the current, an emblem of all progress, following the same law with the system, with time, and all that is madeand at last I resolved to launch myself on its bosom and float whither it would bear me.

Beware of any profession for which you must buy new clothes.

Yet we must try the harder, the less the prospect of success.

Be assured that every man's success is in proportion to his average ability. The meadow flowers spring and bloom where the watersannually deposit their slime, not where they reach in some freshet only. A man is not his hope, nor his despair, nor yet his past deed. We know not yet what we have done, still less what we are doing. Wait till evening, and other parts of our day's work will shine than we had thought at noon, and we shall discover the real purport of our toil. As when the farmer has reached the end of the furrow and looks back, he can tell best where the pressed earth shines most.

In Canada an ordinary New England house would be mistaken for the château, and while every village here contains at least severalgentlemen or "squires," there is but one to a seigniory.

Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towardsrecognizing and organizing the rights of man?

The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.

We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many.

The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind.

If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?

I could lecture on dry oak leaves; I could, but who would hear me? If I were to try it on any large audience, I fear it would be no gain to them, and a positive loss to me. I should have behaved rudely toward my rustling friends.

There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness.

I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. I buy but a few things, and those not till long after I begin to want them, so that when I do get them I am prepared to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet.

...A traveller is to be reverenced as such. His profession is the best symbol of our life. Going from - toward; it is the history of every one of us. It is a great art to saunter.

Dissent without action is consent.

I have much to learn of the Indian, nothing of the missionary.

Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness.

There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law.

Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it.

How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a slight outrage against universal laws.

Nature is goodness crystallized.

It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.

The scholar is not apt to make his most familiar experience come gracefully to the aid of his expression.

Let us consider under what disadvantages Science has hitherto labored before we pronounce thus confidently on her progress.

Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted is method.

The scholar may be sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort, without a corresponding energy of the body.

Surely the writer is to address a world of laborers, and such therefore must be his own discipline.

We bless and curse ourselves.

A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.

The only fruit which even much living yields seems to be often only some trivial success,--the ability to do some slight thing better. We make conquest only of husks and shells for the most part,--at least apparently,--but sometimes these are cinnamon and spices, you know.

How insupportable would be the days, if the night with its dews and darkness did not come to restore the drooping world. As the shades begin to gather around us, our primeval instincts are aroused, and we steal forth from our lairs, like the inhabitants of the jungle, in search of those silent and brooding thoughts which are the natural prey of the intellect.

Any moral philosophy is exceedingly rare. This of Menu addresses our privacy more than most. It is a more private and familiar, and at the same time, a more public and universal word, than is spoken in parlor or pulpit nowadays.

All expression of truth does at length take this deep ethical form.

This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest posterity, content with slightly and religiously retouchingthe old material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity.

There is no history of how bad became better.

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

My Friend is that one whom I can associate with my choicest thought.

Alas! this is the crying sin of the age, this want of faith in the prevalence of a man. Nothing can be effected but by one man. Hewho wants help wants everything. True, this is the condition of our weakness, but it can never be the means of our recovery. We must first succeed alone, that we may enjoy our success together.

I do not know what right I have to so much happiness, but rather hold it in reserve till the time of my desert.

I am too easily contented with a slight and almost animal happiness. My happiness is a good deal like that of the woodchucks.

I should consider it a greater success to interest one wise and earnest soul, than a million unwise and frivolous.

You fail in your thoughts, or you prevail in your thoughts only.

As for me, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now only the subtlest imaginable essences, which would not stain the morning sky.

Undoubtedly, in the most brilliant successes, the first rank is always sacrificed.

The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its essence.

The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always a poem not printed on paper,... in the poet's life. It is what hehas become through his work. Not how is the idea expressed in stone, or on canvas or paper, is the question, but how far it has obtained form and expression in the life of the artist. His true work will not stand in any prince's gallery.

A true poem is distinguished not so much by a felicitous expression, or any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere which surrounds it. Most have beauty of outline merely, and are striking as the form and bearing of a stranger; but true verses come toward us indistinctly, as the very breath of all friendliness, and envelop us in their spirit and fragrance.

The life without men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass.

Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.

If we see nature as pausing, immediately all mortifies and decays; but seen as progressing, she is beautiful.

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.

Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.

The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but an habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance.

Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply; for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is, in fact, a subtle detraction.

True kindness is a pure divine affinity, Not founded upon human consanguinity. It is a spirit, not a blood relation, Superior to family and station.

In the long run, you hit only what you aim at.

There must be the... generating force of Love behind every effort destined to be successful.

Where there is a brave man, in the thickest of the fight, there is the post of honor.

Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.

When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs. I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb's bleat.

To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel. Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.

There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography.

Scholars are wont to sell their birthright for a mess of learning.

Those undeserved joys which come uncalled and make us more pleased than grateful are they that sing.

The most alive is the wildest.

What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own.

When it was proposed to me to go abroad, rub oft some rust, and better my condition in a worldly sense, I fear lest my life will lose some of its homeliness. If these fields and streams and woods, the phenomena of nature here, and the simple occupations of the inhabitants should cease to interest and inspire me, no culture or wealth would atone for the loss.

Most men, it seems to me, do not care for Nature and would sell their share in all her beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated sum - many for a glass of rum. Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

When any real progress is made, we unlearned and learn anew what we thought we knew before.

There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers

Associate reverently, and as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.

In the wilderness is the salvation of the world.

The sacredness, if there is any, is all in yourself and not in the place.

But why should not the New Englander try new adventures - not lay so much stress on his grain, his potato and grass crop, and his orchards - and raise other crops than these? Why concern ourselves so much about our beans for seed, and not be concerned at all about a new generation of men.