"Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction."
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Quote collection
Henry David Thoreau quotes (page 92 of 139)
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"There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our horizon is never quite at our elbows."
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"The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering for want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got."
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"As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most excellent speech finally falls into Silence. Silence is audible to all men, at all times, and in all places. She is when we hear inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly. Creation has not displaced her, but is her visible framework and foil. All sounds are her servants, and purveyors, proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, and earnestly to be sought after."
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"Art can never match the luxury and superfluity of Nature. In the former all is seen; it cannot afford concealed wealth, and is niggardly in comparison; but Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots."
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"It would be no reproach to a philosopher, that he knew the future better than the past, or even than the present. It is better worth knowing."
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"Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them."
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"A sufficiently great and generous trust could never be abused."
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"I never yet knew the sun to be knocked down and rolled through a mud-puddle; he comes out honor-bright from behind every storm. Let us then take sides with the sun, seeing we have so much leisure."
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"Our molting season, like that of the fouls, must be a crisis in our lives."
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"There never is but one opportunity of a kind."
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"Do not entertain doubts if they are not agreeable to you."
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"Of all the men who were said to be my contemporaries, it seemed to me that John Brown was the only one who had not died."
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"Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had no juice in them more than the singers."
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"The outward is only the outside of that which is within. Men are not concealed under habits, but are revealed by them; they are their true clothes."
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"The strongest wind cannot stagger a Spirit; it is a Spirit's breath. A just man's purpose cannot be split on any Grampus or material rock, but itself will split rocks till it succeeds."
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"I am accustomed to think very long of going anywhere,--am slow to move. I hope to hear a response of the oracle first."
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"There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law."
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"Men will tell you sometimes that "money's hard." That shows it was not made to eat, I say.... Some of those who sank with the steamer the other day found out that money was heavy too."
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"For the most part we stupidly confound one man with another. The dull distinguish only races or nations, or at most classes, but the wise man, individuals."
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