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1653bb3
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A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself,--and not a taper lighted at the hearth-stone of the race, which pales before the light of common day.
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perfection
words
literature
reading
nature
knowledge
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Henry David Thoreau |
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6d405f5
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Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply. "What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off--that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed--he had said t..
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Henry David Thoreau |
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e554ca0
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Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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e76e3d1
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The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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9def932
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Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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d8328ec
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But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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636ca96
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There are thousands who are opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing....
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war
slavery
citizenship
beliefs
justice
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Henry David Thoreau |
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16312f3
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let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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cd9c04a
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We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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24327c3
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I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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4cc1313
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We should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experience and character.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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a24efcd
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Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost.
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life
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Henry David Thoreau |
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3163346
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I wish my countrymen to consider, that whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual, without having to pay the penalty for it. A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length ever become the laughing-stock of the world.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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a03e650
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No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes: yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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ef2399f
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Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short." [ ; November 16, 1857]"
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writing
precision
storytelling
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Henry David Thoreau |
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40f6207
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In my opinion, the sun was made to light worthier toil than this.
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work
labor
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Henry David Thoreau |
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e4d7e2e
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For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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a8c7fd6
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There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which ..
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carpenter
walden
nest
house
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Henry David Thoreau |
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31c39ee
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Man is the artificer of his own happiness.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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f80fdc1
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I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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f36c7ee
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Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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3e66652
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But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried.
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try
measure
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Henry David Thoreau |
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e17eecc
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Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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a24accb
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Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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3e70805
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I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least--and it is commonly more than that--sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts, or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, ..
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Henry David Thoreau |
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e4ca267
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If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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66cdb6d
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As long as possible live free and uncommitted.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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3c288e0
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Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
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justice
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Henry David Thoreau |
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9a61257
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Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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1a28c07
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We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return; prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only, as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again; if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man; then you are ready for a walk..
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Henry David Thoreau |
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5b5b4a7
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The true and not despairing Friend will address his Friend in some such terms as these. "I never asked thy leave to let me love thee,--I have a right. I love thee not as something private and personal, which is your own, but as something universal and worthy of love, which I have found. O, how I think of you! You are purely good, --you are infinitely good. I can trust you forever. I did not think that humanity was so rich. Give me an opport..
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friendship
love
possessiveness
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Henry David Thoreau |
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c82af55
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I mean that they (students) should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics.
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education
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Henry David Thoreau |
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a49e5f6
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I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is well adapted to our weakness as our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined n..
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Henry David Thoreau |
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827c93a
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Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodon..
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literature
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Henry David Thoreau |
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0f25a3f
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In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, fi..
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writing
walden
myself
first
self
person
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Henry David Thoreau |
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54c95c2
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No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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83bf9f8
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This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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f005654
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This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments?
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solitutde
space
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Henry David Thoreau |
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10086af
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What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
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mindfulness
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Henry David Thoreau |
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88b7ac6
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Life consists with Wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest trees.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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51f5f2d
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The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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a0647eb
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God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.
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Henry David Thoreau |
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9e48b50
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My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen,..
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time
stillness
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Henry David Thoreau |
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0986fc6
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I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.
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suffering
life
wisdom
wit
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Henry David Thoreau |