Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862):
A gun gives you the body, not the bird.
A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority.
All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.
An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
Any fool can make a rule
And any fool will mind it.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
Do not be too moral.
You may cheat yourself out of much of life.
So
aim above morality.
Be not simply good;
be good for something.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
For my part, I could easily do without the post-office... I have never received more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
How trivial and uninteresting and wearisome and unsatisfactory are all employments for which men will pay you money!
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
I say that there are gods but they care not what men do.
I say, beware of enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
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 he hears, however measured or far away.
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.
If I knew for a certainty that some man was coming to my house with the conscious intention of doing me good, I would run for my life.
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 of instances and applications?
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.
In the long run, men only hit what they aim at.
It takes two to speak the truth- one to speak, and another to hear.
Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.
That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess.
The gods can never leave a man in the world who is privy to their secrets. They cannot have a spy here.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
The rich man... is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.
The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky.
The youth gets together the materials for a bridge to the moon, and at length the middle-aged man decides to make a woodshed with them.
Things do not change, we do.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.
We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.
We live but a fraction of our life. Why do we not let on the flood, raise the gates, and set all our wheels in motion? He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Employ your senses.
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?
Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate oddfellow society.
Categories: Henry David Thoreau, Quotes of the day
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