Quotes By Author
Quotations By Henry David Thoreau
Avarice
By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling 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.
Beauty
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far moreglorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
Books
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them all.
Business
We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
Business
A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.
Change
Things do not change, we do.
Charity
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
Conservative-Liberal
The man for whom law exists -- the man of forms, the Conservative, is a tame man.
Dreams
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Earth
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
Earth
A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.
Earth
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
Education
What does education often do? It makes a straight cut ditch of a free meandering brook.
Enthusiasm
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Existence
Being is the great explainer.
Expectation
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.
Exploration
At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable.
Faith
The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.
Fame
Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs.
Fashion
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. -- Henry David Thoreau
Friendship
A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.-- Henry David Thoreau
Goodness
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
Kindness
We hate the kindness which we understand.
Love
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
Philosophy
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts; but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates
Success
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Success
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.
Success
I have learned this at least by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Time
Time is but the stream I go a fishing in.
Travel
The man who goes out alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
Wealth
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.