Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.
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
Men
Motivational
Rather
Something
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.
Henry David Thoreau
The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man.
Henry David Thoreau
Men talk about Bible miracles because there is no miracle in their lives. Cease to gnaw that crust. There is ripe fruit over your head.
Henry David Thoreau
One should be always on the trail of one's own deepest nature. For it is the fearless living out of your own essential nature that connects you to the Divine.
Henry David Thoreau
Our molting season, like that of the fouls, must be a crisis in our lives.
Henry David Thoreau
The kindness I have longest remembered has been of this sort, the sort unsaid so far behind the speaker's lips that almost it already lay in my heart. It did not have far to go to be communicated.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character?
Henry David Thoreau
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.
Henry David Thoreau
Music is perpetual, and only the hearing is intermittent.
Henry David Thoreau
In the love of narrow souls I make many short voyages but in vain-I find no sea room-but in great souls I sail before the wind without a watch, and never reach the shore.
Henry David Thoreau
Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them - that it was a vain endeavor?
Henry David Thoreau
There is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches of science can never span.
Henry David Thoreau
Men talk glibly enough about moonshine, as if they knew its qualities very well, and despised them as owls might talk of sunshine,--none of your sunshine!--but this word commonly means merely something which they do not understand,--which they are abed and asleep to, however much it may be worth their while to be up and awake to it.
Henry David Thoreau
I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good.
Henry David Thoreau
A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.
Henry David Thoreau
The only government that I recognize--and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army--is that power thatestablishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.
Henry David Thoreau
I am convinced that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.
Henry David Thoreau
If one hesitates in his path, let him not proceed. Let him respect his doubts, for doubts, too, may have some divinity in them.
Henry David Thoreau
I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?
Henry David Thoreau
