If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.


Henry David Thoreau

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I'm sure that, fo...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his livin...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The Bible tells me that no greater love has a man than to lay down his life for his friends. John Ke...
MAX CLELAND
Esau selleth his birthright for a mess of pottage.
BIBLE
I believe that there is a Matrix and... to be more accurate I am in the Pornography Matrix.
DEYTH BANGER
I say that no man can be greater than the man who bravely and heroically sacrifices his life for the...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL
I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan ado...
GEORGE WASHINGTON
I am grieved that it should be said he is my brother, and take these courses. Well, as he brews, so ...
BEN JOHNSON
I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for t...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
No, I am not powerful nor do I wish to be, for it is God using my weakness that makes me potent and ...
CRAIG D. LOUNSBROUGH
My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life, as you wish; and if it were only the story o...
BLACK ELK
He died sober. He died clean for the rest of his life. He ended his life the way we wanted him to be...
WALLIS HUTCHKO
I am because someone dreams me; a man who sleeps and dreams and sees me acting, living and moving �...
GIOVANNI PAPINI
Not that I have the power to clutch my hand When his fair angels would salute by palm, But for...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
I always said I would fight a man in his living room and now I am getting to prove that,
LAMON BREWSTER
I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold u...
GEORGE MACDONALD
...the more I see the better satisfied I am that I am an American; free born and free bred, where I ...
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
For my own part, I would rather be in company with a dead man than with an absent one; for if the de...
LORD CHESTERFIELD
I am because someone dreams me; a man who sleeps and dreams and sees me acting, living and moving –...
GIOVANNI PAPINI
Dear Eloisa (said I) there’s no occasion for your crying so much about such a trifle. (for I was w...
JANE AUSTEN
Having been there - I repeat, having been there - I do not wish jail for any person. I really feel s...
DAN WALKER
I would like to be remembered as a man who had a wonderful time living life, a man who had good frie...
FRANK SINATRA
From My Life's Work by Cardinal Newman

God has created me to do Him some definite service...
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since
he whom I loved, as if he should...
AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
Not that I have the power to clutch my hand
When his fair angels would salute by palm,
But for...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
What a country wants to make it richer is never consumption, but production. Where there is the latt...
JOHN STUART MILL
...the average Frenchman would shrug, as if to say: "These notions of yours are all very fascinating...
JULIA CHILD
Feast of Luke the Evangelist He is my Altar, I His holy place; I am His guest, and He my living foo...
FRANCIS QUARLES
If there should prove to be one real, living Free State Democrat in Kansas, I suggest that it might ...
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
At the time of his death, Biko had a wife and three children for which he left a letter that stated ...
STEVE BIKO
It is not at all a fit place for you," said Clementina.

"Gently, my lady. It is a ...
GEORGE MACDONALD
I am sure that there is many a young man who would think it a great honor to exchange his name for y...
ERIK CHRISTIAN HAUGAARD
It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have ca...
BIBLE
there was a soldier in the next room living with his wife and he would soon be going over there to p...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
I would like to be remembered as a man who had a wonderful time living life, a man who had good frie...
FRANK SINATRA
I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adop...
GEORGE WASHINGTON
When your are in the ring, ... it is mental. You may get hit with a good shot or you may hit him wit...
ANDRE WARD
It’s dangerous to assume that because a person is drawn to holiness in his study that he is thereb...
R.C. SPROUL
My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink and sleep, and I could not help doing thes...
LEO TOLSTOY
I there represent that I sent notice of my method to Mr. Leibnitz before he sent notice of his metho...
ISAAC NEWTON
I have written it before and am not ashamed to write it again. Without Wodehouse I am not sure that ...
STEPHEN FRY
Your name?" George asked him directly. He had probably seen the man a dozen times before yet did not...
METTE IVIE HARRISON
This is my commandment, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you. Greater love hath no m...
BIBLE
It felt very good to work for an organization that sends a message that I believe in. And most impor...
BETTY GARDNER
I have lived in Kentucky all of my life. I am married to my high school sweetheart, David, a local p...
MOLLY HARPER
Then Allen said, “I’ve discovered a way to have a lot more time. In the past, I used to look at ...
THICH NHAT HANH
No man in civil society can be exempted from the laws of it: for if any man may do what he thinks fi...
JOHN LOCKE
I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my fe...
ANAïS NIN
I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my fe...
ANAIS NIN
If I know that I shall be as an angel, and more; if I shall behold all God has made; if he shall own...
MATTHEW SIMPSON
Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.' Whatever happens is to His good purpose and for His glory....
FRANCINE RIVERS
I wish people would not use him as a means to justify criticism of Damien Hirst and others. There is...
KAREN WRIGHT
Let me repeat. I have not read all the work of this present generation of writing. I have not had ti...
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Since I do not believe that there should be different recommendations for people living in the Bronx...
PAUL FARMER
Men and women who sell their birthright for a mess of pottage will tell you that their demise began ...
SHERI L. DEW
I should think he must be rather a dressy man for his time of life. Such a number of looking-glasses...
JANE AUSTEN
Who am I to deny my Master pleasure, simply because it is not at the hands of myself? He is free to ...
ASTRID KNOWLES
I feel that I make an honest living. I take care of my children. I feel that there should be somethi...
JOHN WOODEN
I have never thought, for my part, that man's freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he w...
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
What I wish for him in my thoughts is that he would preserve his health, I think that's the most imp...
MARINA KHODORKOVSKY
They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. "Oh, comply!" it said. "Think of hi...
CHARLOTTE BRONTë
Thank God, I have my work, but instead of earning money by it, I need money to be able to work; that...
VINCENT VAN GOGH
With this there grows In my most ill-compos'd affection such A stanchless avarice that, were I...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
I would like Mike to coach out his career here. What's left on his contract or not left on his contr...
PAT BOWLEN
I felt that what I had been standing on had collapsed and that I had nothing left under my feet. Wha...
LEO TOLSTOY
I realize that some people will not believe that a child of little more than ten years is capable of...
HERMANN HESSE
Now I am near to the getting of my crown, which shall be sure; for I bless the Lord, and desire all ...
DONALD CARGILL
Even at 80, I shall say that I am yet to start, Yes! I shall say that I am yet to start, for that sh...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
My father is a very successful man in the corporate world, and I am his only son. He had certain dre...
RAM KAPOOR
There was a lot of emotion involved. To be honest, I have more respect for Martin than since the day...
JONATHON SHOCKEY
We were never lovers, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however. I regret the convers...
NEIL GAIMAN
They say that dogs may dream, and when Topsy was old, his feet would move in his sleep. With his eye...
ALICE HOFFMAN
He was my right-hand man, no question. He worked with me most of the time as my offensive line coach...
BILL MARION
People from my first home say I'm brave. They tell me I'm strong. They pat me on the back and say, '...
KATIE J. DAVIS
Who am I? I am that. Nothing can change that. Words, intellect and concepts can never reach that. It...
AMIT RAY
There's plenty of money out there. They print more every day. But this ticket, there's only five of ...
ROALD DAHL
I heard exactly the same thing, a long time ago to be sure, from a doctor," the elder remarked. "He ...
FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others tha...
LEO TOLSTOY
A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal ...
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square dea...
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his...
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
When I wasn’t in the barn garden, helping out, sorting seeds or checking hoses I’d spend time al...
MICHAEL POELTL
A man living joyfully in the network of his acquaintances with the presence of a few occasional stra...
ANUJ SOMANY
Jesus embraced His not enough ... He gives thanks ... and there is more than enough. More than enoug...
ANN VOSKAMP
For my own part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen the representative of our country. He is ...
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
There is nothing about which I am more anxious than my country, and for its sake I am willing to die...
ELIZABETH I
God be praised for his gracious long suffering towards me in sparing my life so long. Grant, graciou...
PATRICK GORDON
Had I truly thought I would not die when he kissed me? But I did. For a moment the breath and life w...
MARTINE LEAVITT
I wish your father were alive, and king-in-waiting. And I his right-hand man still. He would be tell...
HOBB, ROBIN
I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equal...
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Sylvia Plath is there for me when actual living people upon who I have depended upon my whole life, ...
ARLAINA TIBENSKY
I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.
If I had had wo...
MADELINE MILLER
I probably prefer comedy. Why? I'm not sure. I feel like the energy of a comedy is a better fit ...
CAMERON MATHISON
The distance between us, and I had never thought of this before, was that they did not know this, an...
JAMES BALDWIN
(...) ClanFintan's gaze captured mine once more.
"I said nothing because I hoped that you would...
P.C. CAST
May I never neither turn left nor turn right in my journey of life, but may I go straight to Christ ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
Each day, as I take various pills, I realize that without those pills I might not be alive -- and, i...
THOMAS SOWELL
I lived in Greece for about four years of my life, and living there had a huge impact on my life gro...
MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS
At times I am flabbergasted that my memory is considered false and my alcoholic father's memory is c...
JENNIFER J. FREYD
A ball had passed between my body and the right arm which supported him, cutting through the sleeve ...
CLARA BARTON

More Henry David Thoreau

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibil...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
In the meanest are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly disposed.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact!
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any noblen...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Simplify, simplify.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
To be awake is to be alive.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The perception of beauty is a moral test.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the worl...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
What is once well done is done forever.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when si...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
That government is best which governs least.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man doe...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Be not simply good - be good for something.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women o...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place exce...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inh...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Live the life you've dreamed.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Truths and roses have thorns about them.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf,...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
There is no remedy for love than to love more.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I heartily accept the motto,That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say t...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your wo...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They ar...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the super...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be l...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I'm sure that, fo...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet ou...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and f...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The world is but a canvas to our imagination.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
This world is but a canvas to our imaginations.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversa...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are so...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
This American government -- what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it g...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna an...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for law, so much as a respect for right.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injust...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the l...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The pleasure we feel in music springs from the obedience which is in it.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Knowledge does not come to us in details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
If the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and wort...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
A name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my n...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond th...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection; and am sensible ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half witted with the half-witted, becaus...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and wat...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
If we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual ph...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as this brain.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Associate reverently, as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the sou...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more m...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is mo...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
It requires nothing less than a chivalric feeling to sustain a conversation with a lady.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no for...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Men have become the tools of their trade.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his t...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his livin...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
It takes two to speak truth -- one to speak, and another to hear.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
You must get your living by loving, or at least half your life is a failure.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will t...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; suc...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, p...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must lay it down and commence living on its h...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Politics is the gizzard of society, full of gut and gravel.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The only wealth is life.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowled...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine,...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
In the long run you hit only what you aim at. Therefore, though you should fail immediately, you had...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valu...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been rid...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Pity the man who has a character to support --it is worse than a large family -- he is silent poor i...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
We falsely attribute to men a determined character -- putting together all their yesterdays -- and a...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Every ambitious would-be empire, clarions it abroad that she is conquering the world to bring it pea...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Seve...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we h...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
It's not enough to be busy. The question is: What are we busy about?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
People die of fright and live of confidence.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling and spending their l...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
It is only when we forget out learning that we begin to know.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
What does education often do? It makes a straight cut ditch of a free meandering brook.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
If you give money, spend yourself with it.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I was once reproved by a minister who was driving a poor beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds amo...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fool...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
There are thousands hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I would not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked what I thought, and attended to my ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate pov...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any preceden...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest t...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
It is desirable that a man live in all respects so simply and preparedly that if an enemy take the t...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Life in us is like the water in a river.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Of what significance are the things you can forget.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, an they who edit and read it are old women ov...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but ...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU