Henry David Thoreau: Trending quotes

Henry David Thoreau trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection
Henry David Thoreau: 770 quotes96 likes

“Love must be as much a light as it is a flame.”

Henry David Thoreau

“The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.”

Henry David Thoreau

“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.”

Henry David Thoreau

Source: Walden and Other Writings

“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 book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: 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. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving.

“A gun gives you the body, not the bird.”

Henry David Thoreau

Quoted by Ralph Waldo Emerson in Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson http://books.google.com/books?id=IhA6AQAAIAAJ&q=%22A+gun+he+said+gives+you+the+body+not+the+bird%22&pg=PA86#v=onepage (1890) by Charles Johnson Woodbury

“Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Source: Civil Disobedience (1849)

“I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.”

Henry David Thoreau

Variant: What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.

“As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?”

Henry David Thoreau

“Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.”

Henry David Thoreau

“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”

Henry David Thoreau

“A man can suffocate on courtesy.”

Henry David Thoreau

“Read not the Times, read the Eternities.”

Henry David Thoreau