"The universe expects every man to do his duty in his parallel of latitude."
Read quote
9 likes
Quote collection
Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 28 of 139)
2.8K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone."
Read quote
9 likes
"The truth is, there is money buried everywhere, and you have only to go to work to find it."
Read quote
9 likes
"The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body, in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up someair in a spacious apartment, and warms that.... Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a little time for the fine arts."
Read quote
9 likes
"In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake."
Read quote
9 likes
"The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful."
Read quote
9 likes
"Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you'll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books. And then you'll be in as much trouble as I am!"
Read quote
9 likes
"Others - as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders - serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few - as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men - serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part."
Read quote
9 likes
"For a man needs only to be turned around once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost...Not 'til we are lost do we begin to find ourselves."
Read quote
9 likes
""Hear! hear!" screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, "winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it.""
Read quote
9 likes
"Live the life you've dreamed."
Read quote
9 likes
"A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind."
Read quote
9 likes
"It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves."
Read quote
9 likes
"An unclean person is universally a slothful one."
Read quote
9 likes
"The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free."
Read quote
9 likes
"What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party."
Read quote
9 likes
"When a dog runs at you, whistle for him."
Read quote
9 likes
"If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?"
Read quote
9 likes
"I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality."
Read quote
9 likes
"My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated with the fumes, call it, of that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over heights unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant."
Read quote
9 likes