Quote

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Henry David Thoreau

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Men
Severe
Think
Effective
Thinking
Bitter
Provoked
Critics
Provoke
Sorry
Provoking
Criticism
Apology
Literature
Expressed
Truth
Bitterness

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
Here or nowhere is our heaven.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
To watch this crystal globe just sent from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this somber drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be Uranus, or it may be in the shutter.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Let nothing come between you and the light.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear all disease and failure helps to make me sad anddoes me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
If I thought that I could speak with discrimination and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, I should praise them, but it tasks me too much. They seem to be the most civil and humane, but I may be mistaken.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
If rightly made, a boat would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two elements, related by one half its structure to some swift and shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and graceful bird.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We must heap up a great pile of doing, for a small diameter of being.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
He who cannot exaggerate is not qualified to utter truth.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Resign yourself to the influence of the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body.
Henry David Thoreau