Search quotes

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 ▲ ▼

Link	Quote	Stars	Tags	Author
d375780	Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.			Henry David Thoreau
2cde7b4	I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.			Henry David Thoreau
f3a6267	The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do..		life resignation	Henry David Thoreau
c821461	The universe is wider than our views of it.			Henry David Thoreau
91f7a48	If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out... but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condem..		dissent	Henry David Thoreau
0b59309	Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.		nature simplicity	Henry David Thoreau
6091c22	Wildness is the preservation of the World.		nature wilderness	Henry David Thoreau
a39819f	One farmer says to me, 'You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;' and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.			Henry David Thoreau
6c3c41f	Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.		friendship	Henry David Thoreau
2a9d78f	A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.		words reading books life language	Henry David Thoreau
6bbacce	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. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer?		pace maturity	Henry David Thoreau
2196ace	Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.		inspirational	Henry David Thoreau
0c73f5d	A lake is a landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.		reflection	Henry David Thoreau
3d88d9f	Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is wo..		unjust humane law society rights government	Henry David Thoreau
67ed82c	We are constantly invited to be what we are.		inspirational	Henry David Thoreau
05cbf18	I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.			Henry David Thoreau
e0aba1e	When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.		reality wisdom	Henry David Thoreau
8cef99d	What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing of the origin and destiny of cats?		philosophy	Henry David Thoreau
b14b89e	Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.		humor tyson percy-jackson	Henry David Thoreau
49092a6	If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.		henry-david-thoreau	Henry David Thoreau
5b49296	I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself.			Henry David Thoreau
ae3b8ee	Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.			Henry David Thoreau
b1883d7	Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.		simplicity materialism	Henry David Thoreau
91aaf68	Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influ..		enlightenment wealth education treasures heritage knowledge	Henry David Thoreau
5829965	Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.		individuality self-trust self-reliance	Henry David Thoreau
8f4af67	In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood			Henry David Thoreau
4421a68	A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us.			Henry David Thoreau
3bdbacb	All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or back gammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Eve..		voting	Henry David Thoreau
ec6674a	If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.		individuality	Henry David Thoreau
584d241	The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.			Henry David Thoreau
17fa2de	It is desirable that a man live in all respects so simply and preparedly that if an enemy take the town... he can walk out the gate empty-handed and without anxiety.		simple-life simple-living simple simplicity	Henry David Thoreau
9a039b3	And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, - we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances ..			Henry David Thoreau
eb7f121	Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity.		peace	Henry David Thoreau
18dc7a3	When I consider that the nobler animal have been exterminated here - the cougar, the panther, lynx, wolverine, wolf, bear, moose, dear, the beaver, the turkey and so forth and so forth, I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed and, as it were, emasculated country... Is it not a maimed and imperfect nature I am conversing with? As if I were to study a tribe of Indians that had lost all it's warriors...I take infinite pains to know all the ..		earth nature conservation woods	Henry David Thoreau
f4d4d12	Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.		time walden	Henry David Thoreau
b640b2e	Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.			Henry David Thoreau
7136f55	Even voting is nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.		politics voting	Henry David Thoreau
7698060	While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them			Henry David Thoreau
054bae5	All change is a miracle to contemplate, but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.			Henry David Thoreau
fef417f	In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.		living-in-the-present regret	Henry David Thoreau
0525aab	Confucius said, "To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."			Henry David Thoreau
b1de435	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.			Henry David Thoreau
3319931	I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.		vegetarianism civilization	Henry David Thoreau
8048a78	Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has			Henry David Thoreau

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 ▲ ▼