Quotes by Henry David Thoreau
I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.
Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.
The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.
The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.
Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.
It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.
There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.
The universe is wider than our views of it.
No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.
There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.
They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?
Live the life you've dreamed.
Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.
The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.
Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.
I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.
There is no just and serene criticism as yet.
Simplify, simplify.
Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?
I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
