Henry David Thoreau quotes · page 2

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Henry David Thoreau

Nature
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are the richest.
4.0 · 36 votes · 94 reads
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Virtues
Humility like the darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.
3.2 · 46 votes · 93 reads
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Art and Culture
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
4.6 · 19 votes · 136 reads
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Various
I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsa
3.7 · 53 votes · 48 reads
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Nature
I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
3.6 · 55 votes · 144 reads
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Virtues
I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?
4.2 · 48 votes · 78 reads
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Various
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone, I never found the companionable as solitude.
3.9 · 56 votes · 88 reads
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Various
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
3.4 · 9 votes · 115 reads
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Government and Politics
I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.
3.8 · 23 votes · 93 reads
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Thought and Reason
I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.
3.0 · 63 votes · 172 reads
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Nature
I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.
3.5 · 12 votes · 53 reads
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Various
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.
3.8 · 16 votes · 13 reads
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Various
I have never found a companion so companionable as solitude.
3.0 · 64 votes · 158 reads
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Various
I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.
3.0 · 12 votes · 29 reads
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Virtues
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
3.0 · 40 votes · 146 reads
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Virtues
I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.
3.9 · 47 votes · 45 reads
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Virtues
I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.
3.5 · 28 votes · 76 reads
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Government and Politics
I say, break the law.
3.4 · 23 votes · 188 reads
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Defects
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.
3.0 · 57 votes · 148 reads
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Time
I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.
3.0 · 45 votes · 32 reads
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Feelings
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.
4.7 · 29 votes · 144 reads
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Feelings
I would not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.
3.3 · 33 votes · 84 reads
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Various
I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
4.5 · 13 votes · 11 reads
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Thought and Reason
If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?
4.3 · 45 votes · 43 reads
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Society
If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revol
3.7 · 57 votes · 178 reads
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Various
If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
3.8 · 17 votes · 49 reads
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Nature
If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I'm sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.
4.5 · 12 votes · 34 reads
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Thought and Reason
If one advances confidently in the directions of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
4.6 · 40 votes · 31 reads
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Various
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
4.7 · 31 votes · 118 reads
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Virtues
If you give money, spend yourself with it.
4.7 · 45 votes · 186 reads
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Thought and Reason
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.
3.3 · 51 votes · 35 reads
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Virtues
It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
3.4 · 53 votes · 60 reads
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Government and Politics
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for law, so much as a respect for right.
4.8 · 19 votes · 73 reads
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Virtues
It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.
3.9 · 52 votes · 12 reads
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Nature
It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.
4.2 · 61 votes · 165 reads
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Society
It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.
3.2 · 43 votes · 167 reads
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Thought and Reason
It takes two to speak truth - one to speak, and another to hear.
4.4 · 58 votes · 101 reads
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Virtues
Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
4.9 · 55 votes · 197 reads
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Various
Let nothing come between you and the light.
4.5 · 53 votes · 45 reads
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Time
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. Let them be your only diet drink and botanical medicines.
4.5 · 9 votes · 195 reads
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Page 2 of 5 · 191 quotes

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