Henry David Thoreau: Trending quotes (page 14)

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Henry David Thoreau: 770   quotes 94   likes

“It is remarkable, that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or to acknowledge the personality of God. … In reading a work on agriculture, we have to skip the author's moral reflections, and the words "Providence" and "He" scattered along the page, to come at the profitable level of what he has to say. What he calls his religion is for the most part offensive to the nostrils. … There is more religion in men's science than there is science in their religion.”

Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

Men , God , Religion , Feeling

“I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Life , Business , Thinking

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”

Henry David Thoreau

No known citation to Thoreau's works. First found, uncredited, in the 1940s in the variant "Success usually comes to those who are too busy to look for it", p. 711, Locomotive Engineers Journal, Volume 76, 1942. Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=N6GZAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Success+usually+comes+to+those+who+are+too+busy%22&dq=%22Success+usually+comes+to+those+who+are+too+busy%22&lr=&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=1900&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=1980&as_brr=0
Misattributed

Motivational , Success , For Team , Life

“What are the earth and all its interests beside the deep surmise which pierces and scatters them?”

Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Friday

“The rich man… is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

“The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls — the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.”

Henry David Thoreau Slavery in Massachusetts

Slavery in Massachusetts

Fate , Game , Strong , Dependency

“In some lyceums they tell me that they have voted to exclude the subject of religion. But how do I know what their religion is, and when I am near to or far from it? I have walked into such an arena and done my best to make a clean breast of what religion I have experienced, and the audience never suspected what I was about.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Religion

“I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

“It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals.”

Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

Truth , Universe

“In the Catholic Church, especially, they go into chancery, make a clean confession, give up all, and think to start again. Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Men , Lie , Thinking , Effort

“If a thousand [citizens] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

“While there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we do not teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual, however; for we do not habitually demand any more of each other.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Sincerity

“Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough,
What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town,
If juster battles are enacted now
Between the ants upon this hummock's crown?”

Henry David Thoreau

The Summer Rain, st. 3

Lie

“Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Men , Thinking , Success

“That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess.”

Henry David Thoreau

June 22, 1839
Journals (1838-1859)

“I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

World

“The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

Democracy

“Some old poet's grand imagination is imposed on us as adamantine everlasting truth, and God's own word! Pythagoras says, truly enough, "A true assertion respecting God, is an assertion of God"; but we may well doubt if there is any example of this in literature.”

Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

God , Truth , Imagination , Literature

“The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.”

Henry David Thoreau

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Wednesday

Water , Time