Quotes About Thoreau

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

Whatever question there may be of his [Thoreau's] talent, there can be none, I think, of his genius. It was a slim and crooked one, but it was eminently personal. He was unperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was worse than provincial—he was parochial.

Somehow I had learned from Thoreau, who doubtless learned it from Confucius, that if a man comes to do his own good for you, then must you flee that man and save yourself

No, they were there, these missionaries, to fulfill some spiritual need of their own. It was a noble need, its purposes unselfish, partaking doubtless of that divine need through which God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son for its salvation. But somewhere I had learned from Thoreau, who doubtless learned it from Confucius, that if a man comes to do his own good for you, then must you flee that man and save yourself.

Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.

But the eyes, though they are no sailors, will never be satisfied with any model, however fashionable, which does not answer all the requisitions of art.

Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth.

Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be. — Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau wrote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," and it seems nothing has changed.

Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure

Even Nature is observed to have her playful moods or aspects, of which man sometimes seems to be the sport.

To say that a man is your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as that the Friend can assist in time of need by his substance, or his influence, or his counsel. Even the utmost goodwill and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams,' Thoreau had said. 'Live the life you've imagined.

But amid pure nature (or the 'tonic of wildness' as Thoreau called it) solitude took on a different character. It became in itself a kind of connection. A connection between herself and the world. And between her and herself.

Ga vol vertrouwen je dromen achterna,' had Thoreau gezegd. 'Leef het leven dat je je hebt voorgenomen.

As Thoreau wrote, 'It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.' And Ash only saw the Nora he had fallen in love with and married, and so, in a way, that was the Nora she was becoming.

If one advances confidently, Thoreau had written in Walden, in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He'd also observed that part of this success was the product of being alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

If one advances confidently,' Thoreau had written in Walden, 'in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.' He'd also observed that part of this success was the product of being alone.

The lonely mind in the busy city yearns for connection because it thinks human-tohuman connection is the point of everything. But amid pure nature (or the 'tonic of wildness' as Thoreau called it) solitude took on a different character. It became in itself a kind of connection. A connection between herself and the world. And between her and herself.

If one advances confidently,' Thoreau had written in Walden, 'in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.' He'd also observed that part of this success was the product of being alone. 'I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.' -The Midnight Library

Knight's disdain for Thoreau was bottomless - 'he had no deep insight into nature'...

Even Henry David Thoreau, not known for kvetching, wrote in The Maine Woods that he was "seriously molested" by bugs.

Carl Jung said that only an introvert could see "the unfathomable stupidity of man." Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, "Wherever is the crowd is a common denominator of stench." Knight's best friend, Thoreau, believed that all societies, no matter how well intentioned, pervert their citizens. Sartre wrote, "Hell is other people.