Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.
Henry David Thoreau
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Ever
Asked
Listening
Humor
Answers
Attended
Greatest
Compliment
Funny
Empathy
Political
Paid
Thought
Answer
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west. We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure.
Henry David Thoreau
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
Henry David Thoreau
Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him.
Henry David Thoreau
The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.
Henry David Thoreau
The fishermen say that the thundering of the pond scares the fishes and prevents their biting.
Henry David Thoreau
I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account.
Henry David Thoreau
All these sounds, the crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the hum of insects at noon, are the evidence of nature's health orsound state.
Henry David Thoreau
To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
Henry David Thoreau
I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side.
Henry David Thoreau
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
Henry David Thoreau
In Homer and Chaucer there is more of the innocence and serenity of youth than in the more modern and moral poets. The Iliad is not Sabbath but morning reading, and men cling to this old song, because they still have moments of unbaptized and uncommitted life, which give them an appetite for more.
Henry David Thoreau
You must get your living by loving. But as it is said of the merchants that ninety-seven in a hundred fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this standard, is a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied.
Henry David Thoreau
There is nothing more difficult to find than oneself.
Henry David Thoreau
One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then
Henry David Thoreau
That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabitable shore of Labrador gave the English no just title to New England, or to the United States generally, any more than to Patagonia.
Henry David Thoreau
The genuine remains of Ossian, or those ancient poems which bear his name, though of less fame and extent, are, in many respects,of the same stamp with the Iliad itself. He asserts the dignity of the bard no less than Homer, and in his era, we hear of no other priest than he.
Henry David Thoreau
If you would be chaste, you must be temperate.
Henry David Thoreau
No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know.
Henry David Thoreau
I think that Nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace.
Henry David Thoreau
The man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while.
Henry David Thoreau
