What is commonly honored with the name of Friendship is no very profound or powerful instinct. Men do not, after all, love… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
“They who suspect a Mephistophiles, or sneering, satirical devil, under all, have not learned the secret of true humor, which sympathizes with… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A worm is as good a traveler as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all their activity… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man: wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
One is wise to cultivate the tree that bears fruit in our soul. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Ex oriente lux may still be the motto of scholars, for the Western world has not yet derived from the East all… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The woodchopper reads the wisdom of the ages recorded on the paper that holds his dinner, then lights his pipe with it.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Concord is just as idiotic as ever in relation to the spirits and their knockings. Most people here believe in a spiritual… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
After reading Howitt's account of the Australian gold-diggings one evening,... I asked myself why I might not be washing some golddaily, though… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
There is no doubt that the loftiest written wisdom is either rhymed or in some way musically measured,--is, in form as well… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I do not remember anything which Confucius has said directly respecting man's "origin, purpose, and destiny." He was more practical than that.… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
On every hand we observe a truly wise practice, in education, in morals, and in the arts of life, the embodied wisdom… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Webster never goes behind government, and so cannot speak with authority about it. His words are wisdom to those legislators who contemplate… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the common… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again And what… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
Who does not see that heresies have some time prevailed, that reforms have already taken place? All this worldly wisdom might be… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet with common sense in very old books, as the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma; a… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in… — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. — Henry David Thoreau Copy Share Image
A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance. — 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
