That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Ninety-nine one-hundredths of our lives we are mere hedgers and ditchers, but from time to time we meet with reminders of our… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of the world, but none of the recording, a mere… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity when contrasted with a finer intelligence. They appear but as the fashions… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concretic layers of woodenness in the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The Xanthus or Scamander is not a mere dry channel and bed of a mountain torrent, but fed by the ever-flowing springs… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
We are acquainted with a mere pellicle of the globe on which we live. Most have not delved six feet beneath the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In an ancient and dead language, any recognition of living nature attracts us. These are such sentences as were written while grass… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The ways in which most men get their living, that is, live, are mere makeshifts, and a shirking of the real business… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Ah! I need solitude. I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Trench says a wild man is a willed man. Well, then, a man of will who does what he wills or wishes,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The English did not come to America from a mere love of adventure, nor to truck with or convert the savages, nor… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from mere gluttony. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
So is the English Parliament provincial. Mere country bumpkins, they betray themselves, when any more important question arises for them to settle,… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
How wholesome winter is, seen far or near; how good, above all mere sentimental, warm-blooded, short-lived, soft-hearted, moral goodness, commonly so called.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Where the citizen uses a mere sliver or board, the pioneer uses the whole trunk of a tree. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I have tasted but little bread in my life. It has been mere grub and provender for the most part. Of bread… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If you take this life to be simply what old religious folks pretend (I mean the effete, gone to seed in a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths the fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practice in this workshop; truths… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“Men say they know many things; But lo! they have taken wings, — The arts and sciences, And a thousand appliances; The wind that… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or back gammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office. You may depend on it, that the… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The still youthful energies of the globe have only to be directed in their proper channel. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Concord's little arch does not span all our fate, nor is what transpires under it law for the universe. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
