"Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs."
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Quote collection
Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 50 of 139)
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"As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full."
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"The ears were made, not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds."
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"We love to hear some men speak, though we hear not what they say; the very air they breathe is rich and perfumed, and the sound of their voices falls on the ear like the rustling of leaves or the crackling of the fire. They stand many deep."
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"We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches."
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"The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest."
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"For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?"
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"Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild - not tamed and broken by society."
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"Translate a book a dozen times from one language to another, and what becomes of its style? Most books would be worn out and disappear in this ordeal. The pen which wrote it is soon destroyed, but the poem survives."
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"What do the botanists know? Our lives should go between the lichen and the bark. The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind. We are still being born, and have as yet but a dim vision of sea and land, sun, moon, and stars, and shall not see clearly till after nine days at least."
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"I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors."
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"The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening."
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"What is wanted is men of principle, who recognize a higher law than the decision of the majority. The marines and the militia whose bodies were used lately were not men of sense nor of principle; in a high moral sense they were not men at all."
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"Instead of water we got here a draught of beer, a lumberer's drink, which would acclimate and naturalize a man at once,-which would make him see green, and, if he slept, dream that he heard the wind sough among the pines."
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"If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose."
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"There are two classes of men called poets. The one cultivates life, the other art,... one satisfies hunger, the other gratifies the palate."
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"Almost any mode of observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted is method."
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"Man needs to know but little more than a lobster in order to catch him in his traps."
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"When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another."
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"The startings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day."
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