"I am not afraid that I shall exaggerate the value and significance of life, but that I shall not be up to the occasion which it is."
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Quote collection
Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 126 of 139)
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"The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact.... In the bare fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold."
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"A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart."
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"Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. The heavens seem to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and distinct. Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a Scandinavian night. The winter is an arctic summer."
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"There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill."
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"I see less difference between a city and a swamp than formerly."
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"Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work."
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"Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society."
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"What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator."
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"Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations tomen; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine."
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"Some, it seems to me, elect their rulers for their crookedness. But I think that a straight stick makes the best cane, and an upright man the best ruler."
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"Every man should stand for a force which is perfectly irresistible."
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"I expect a time when, or rather an integrity by which, a man will get his coat as honestly and as perfectly fitting as a tree itsbark. Now our garments are typical of our conformity to the ways of the world, i.e., of the devil, and to some extent react on us and poison us, like that shirt which Hercules put on."
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"A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate."
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"To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts may be a matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with the utmost truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pureness, must be transparent as light."
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"I must conclude that Conscience, if that be the name of it, was not given us for no purpose, or for a hindrance. However flattering order and expediency may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy, and we will choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy, and maintain ourselves on this earth, and in this life, as we may, without signing our death-warrant. Let us see if we cannot stay here, where He has put us, on his own conditions. Does not his law reach as far as his light? The expedients of the nations clash with one another: only the absolutely right is expedient for all."
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"Methinks I am never quite committed, never wholly the creature of my moods, but always to some extent their critic. My only integral experience is in my vision. I see, perchance, with more integrity than I feel."
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"We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between theilliterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were."
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"What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is."
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"Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West."
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