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I know of no redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved I fall back on to this ground.

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
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Fall
Back
Things
Redeeming
Love
Preference
Sincere
Qualities
Ground
Quality

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety.
Henry David Thoreau
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History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning ofthings, which natural history might with reason assume to do but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,--when did burdock and plantain sprout first?
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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Give me the old familiar world, post-office and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten.
Henry David Thoreau
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Long as I have lived, and many blasphemers as I have heard and seen, I have never yet heard or witnessed any direct and consciousblasphemy or irreverence but of indirect and habitual, enough. Where is the man who is guilty of direct and personal insolence to Him that made him?
Henry David Thoreau
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Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.
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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However mean your life is, meet it and live it.
Henry David Thoreau
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By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.
Henry David Thoreau
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I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.
Henry David Thoreau
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It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.
Henry David Thoreau
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If misery loves company, misery has company enough.
Henry David Thoreau
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We can never have enough of Nature.
Henry David Thoreau
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Philosophy, having crept clinging to the rocks so far, puts out its feelers many ways in vain.
Henry David Thoreau
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When my legs begin to move, the thoughts begin to flow.
Henry David Thoreau
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I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not truly lived.
Henry David Thoreau
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Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another.
Henry David Thoreau
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Instead of water we got here a draught of beer, a lumberer's drink, which would acclimate and naturalize a man at once,-which would make him see green, and, if he slept, dream that he heard the wind sough among the pines.
Henry David Thoreau
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If labor mainly, or to any considerable degree, serves the purpose of a police, to keep men out of mischief, it indicates a rottenness at the foundation of our community.
Henry David Thoreau
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My Friend is that one whom I can associate with my choicest thought.
Henry David Thoreau