"There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be."
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Quote collection
Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 34 of 139)
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"We cannot put a noose around another man's neck without first hanging ourselves."
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"Priests and physicians should never look one another in the face. They have no common ground, nor is there any to mediate betweenthem. When the one comes, the other goes. They could not come together without laughter, or a significant silence, for the one's profession is a satire on the other's, and either's success would be the other's failure."
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"All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed,but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say it."
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"Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections."
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"Today you may write a chapter on the advantages of traveling, and tomorrow you may write another chapter on the advantages of not traveling."
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"Some simple dishes recommend themselves to our imaginations as well as palates."
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"Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most sensitive."
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"We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure."
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"Every blade in the field - Every leaf in the forest - lays down its life in its season as beautifully as it was taken up."
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"I do not know what right I have to so much happiness, but rather hold it in reserve till the time of my desert."
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"Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds."
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"Spring. March fans it, April christens it, and May puts on its jacket and trousers."
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"If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life."
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"It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a walker."
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"I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who have understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks,-who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering."
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"If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?"
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"The fibers of all things have their tension and are strained like the strings of an instrument."
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"I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour of four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for."
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"All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it."
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