"I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth."
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Quote collection
Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 57 of 139)
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"We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return - sending back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms."
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"Every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us."
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"We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough."
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"My eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground much than at the heavens."
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"I know of no redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved I fall back on to this ground."
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"The works of great poets have never been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them."
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"I do not judge men by anything they can do. Their greatest deed is the impression they make on me."
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"Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient."
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"If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer; but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless."
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"In Adam's fall We sinned all. In the new Adam's rise, We shall all reach the skies."
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"It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady."
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"When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc... I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural."
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"The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears to hear it."
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"It is interesting to observe with what singular unanimity the farthest sundered nations and generations consent to give completeness and roundness to an ancient fable, of which they indistinctly appreciate the beauty or the truth. By a faint and dream-like effort, though it be only by the vote of a scientific body, the dullest posterity slowly add some trait to the mythus. As when astronomers call the lately discovered planet Neptune; or the asteroid Astr"
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"If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth"
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"Scholars are wont to sell their birthright for a mess of learning."
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"At death our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart farther from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death."
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"Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion,--as if the short spring days were an eternity."
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"The very thrills of genius are disorganizing. The body is never quite acclimated to its atmosphere, but how often, succumbs and goes into a decline."
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