"Men cannot conceive of a state of things so fair that it cannot be realized."
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Quote collection
Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 129 of 139)
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"Comparatively, we can excuse any offense against the heart, but not against the imagination. The imagination knows--nothing escapes its glance from out its eyry--and it controls the breast."
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"As we looked up in silence to those distant lights, we were reminded that it was a rare imagination which first taught that the stars are worlds, and had conferred a great benefit on mankind."
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"Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world?"
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"As a preacher, I should be prompted to tell men, not so much how to get their wheat bread cheaper, as of the bread of life compared with which that is bran. Let a man only taste these loaves, and he becomes a skillful economist at once."
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"Verily, chemistry is not a splitting of hairs when you have got half a dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory."
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"A man may travel fast enough and earn his living on the road."
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"Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another."
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"I have heard of many going astray even in the village streets, when the darkness was so thick you could cut it with a knife, as the saying is..."
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"Invariably our best nights were those when it rained."
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"The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like timber collected in yards for public works, which still supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is liable to dry rot."
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"Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds?"
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"We falsely attribute to men a determined character - putting together all their yesterdays - and averaging them - we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support - it is worse than a large family - he is the silent poor indeed."
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"No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow."
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"Nature is fair in proportion as the youth is pure. The heavens and the earth are one flower ; the earth is the calyx, the heavens the corolla."
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"The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it."
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"My friend is one... who take me for what I am."
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"The eye which can appreciate the naked and absolute beauty of a scientific truth is far more rare than that which is attracted by a moral one."
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"We saw men haying far off in the meadow, their heads waving like the grass which they cut. In the distance the wind seemed to bend all alike."
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"As long as I have the friendship of the sesasons life will never be a burden to me."
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