Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 2

We have no festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, not excepting our cattle-shows and so-called Thanksgivings, by which the farmer expresses a sense of the sacredness of his calling, or is reminded of its sacred origin. It is the premium and the feast which tempt him. He sacrifices not to Ceres and the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal Plutus rather. By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.

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, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.

Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances.

Do what you love. Know your own bone gnaw at it bury it unearth it and gnaw it still.

Whate'er we leave to God God does and blesses us.

We are constantly invited to be what we are.

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.

A man thinking or working will always be alone, let him be where he will.

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 the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature.

Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.

Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts, -a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments, though it may be, -"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,As his corse to the rampart were hurried;Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot,O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.

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 worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them?

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.

Misfortunes occur only when a man is false.... Events circumstances etc. have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown.

I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things.

Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.

What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

The trees and shrubs rear white arms to the sky on every side; and where were walls and fences, we see forms stretching in frolic gambols across the dusky landscape, as if Nature had strewn her fresh designs over the fields by night as models for man's art.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good be good for something.

Which is the best man to deal with,-he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may Old time is still a-flying. And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying.