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I love you not as something private and personal, which is my own, but as something universal and worthy of love which I have found.

Henry David Thoreau

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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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Found
Something
Love
Worthy
Private
Friendship
Universal
Personal

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?
Henry David Thoreau
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No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?
Henry David Thoreau
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There must be some nerve and heroism in our love, as of a winter morning.
Henry David Thoreau
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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
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Whatever beauty we behold, the more it is distant, serene, and cold, the purer and more durable it is. It is better to warm ourselves with ice than with fire.
Henry David Thoreau
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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
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Unless the human race perspire more than I do, there is no occasion to live by the sweat of their brow. If men cannot get on without money (the smallest amount will suffice), the truest method of earning it is by working as a laborer at one dollar per day. You are least dependent so I speak as an expert, having used several kinds of labor.
Henry David Thoreau
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The discoveries which we make abroad are special and particular those which we make at home are general and significant. The further off, the nearer the surface. The nearer home, the deeper.
Henry David Thoreau
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I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.
Henry David Thoreau
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I have a great deal of company in my house especially in the morning, when nobody calls.
Henry David Thoreau
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Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nature is not made after such a fashion as we would have her. We piously exaggerate her wonders, as the scenery around our home.
Henry David Thoreau
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Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.
Henry David Thoreau
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If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?
Henry David Thoreau
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A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have never been out of sight of land.
Henry David Thoreau
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Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.
Henry David Thoreau
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Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.
Henry David Thoreau
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Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. ... Shall we always study to obtain more, and not sometimes be content with less?
Henry David Thoreau
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Surely one may as profitably be soaked in the juices of a swamp for one day as pick his way dry-shod over sand. Cold and damp ? are they not as rich experience as warmth and dryness?
Henry David Thoreau
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If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.
Henry David Thoreau