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8024a6f
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To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will tax the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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3b9a50a
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The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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11bbc7c
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In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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c03a323
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Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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925816c
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See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. 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.
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reputation
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Henry David Thoreau |
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4238f4b
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The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night... All memorable events, I should say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say, "All intelligences awake with the morning."
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Henry David Thoreau |
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d482131
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Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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a880d21
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Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.
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want
physical
home
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Henry David Thoreau |
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bac1ecc
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I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life
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Henry David Thoreau |
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431d1ad
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Spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it, reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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8b1406b
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I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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5f724e2
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As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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2f24fcc
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The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains.
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conformity
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Henry David Thoreau |
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f276251
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No man ever followed his genius til it misled him.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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1381275
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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, 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 loiter in winter while ..
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grace
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Henry David Thoreau |
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7108f11
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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 musty old cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post office, and at the sociable, and a..
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solitude
philosophy
walden
social
thoreau
introversion
introvert
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Henry David Thoreau |
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67967a5
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A taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors
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Henry David Thoreau |
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d1a9b96
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Morning brings back the heroic ages. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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abd9d49
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Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable.
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tattooing
tattoos
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Henry David Thoreau |
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4516900
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Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.
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nature
strength
weakness
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Henry David Thoreau |
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70a0f1c
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Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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7a983a5
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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.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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d952b0e
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The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?
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Henry David Thoreau |
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b04a0ac
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My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant.
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learning
self-awareness
knowledge
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Henry David Thoreau |
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0ea1da6
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I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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e4a351b
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Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in tho..
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philosophy
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Henry David Thoreau |
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2136634
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The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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071cb4e
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The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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5ac646d
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Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
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relationships
technology
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Henry David Thoreau |
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889b7ea
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I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune.
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smile
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Henry David Thoreau |
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117dac5
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It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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9894a45
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There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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cb93884
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The true price of anything you do is the amount of time you exchange for it.
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time
success
productivity
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Henry David Thoreau |
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171b2c8
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I am convinced that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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e110680
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I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south
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Henry David Thoreau |
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6cfa328
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Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.
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law
justice
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Henry David Thoreau |
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4dce79a
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Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
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laws
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Henry David Thoreau |
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eb67fe8
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It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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0ee4c27
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If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.
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safety
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Henry David Thoreau |
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d8eb0c0
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The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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bd4295d
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Every child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to stay outdoors, even in wet and cold. It plays house, as well as horse, having an instinct for it...At last we know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than we think.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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7052d96
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This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields, took it for granted that..
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work
industriousness
bustle
leisure
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Henry David Thoreau |
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e4f120a
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I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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6623395
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Be not simply good; be good for something.
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Henry David Thoreau |