Inspiring Quotes by Henry David Thoreau - Page 4

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"There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life"

"Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once"

"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals"

"What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new"

"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us"

"True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance"

"To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle"

"To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain"

"What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party"

"Its healthy to be sick sometimes"

"It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things"

"In the meanest are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly disposed"

"In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society"

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived"

"Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else"

"We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being"

"There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living"

"It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature"

"Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day"

"Things do not change; we change"

"There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted"

"The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected"

"Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are"

"May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!"

"Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men"

"If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen"

"I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls"

"How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them"

"How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?"

"We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success"

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it"

"Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man"

"In wilderness is the preservation of the world"

"We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see"

"That government is best which governs least"

"How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?"

"I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment"

"Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?"

"Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it"

"Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts"

"Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing"

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