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Compliments and flattery oftenest excite my contempt by the pretension they imply for who is he that assumes to flatter me? To compliment often implies an assumption of superiority in the complimenter. It is, in fact, a subtle detraction.

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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Compliment
Flatter
Contempt
Imply
Assumption
Excite
Subtle
Assumes
Assuming
Pretension
Fact
Implies
Detraction
Often
Flattery
Oftenest
Facts
Superiority
Compliments

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Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable.
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What is called common sense is excellent in its department, and as invaluable as the virtue of conformity in the army and navy,--for there must be subordination,--but uncommon sense, that sense which is common only to the wisest, is as much more excellent as it is more rare.
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That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.
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There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography.
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My friend is one... who take me for what I am.
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On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.
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We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,--and then we can hardly see anything else.
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Philosophy, certainly, is some account of truths the fragments and very insignificant parts of which man will practice in this workshop truths infinite and in harmony with infinity, in respect to which the very objects and ends of the so-called practical philosopher will be mere propositions, like the rest.
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Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
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Biography, too, is liable to the same objection it should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our bowels that we may be somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be?
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This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments?
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Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.
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At least let us have healthy books.
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I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
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All great enterprises are self-supporting.
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Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.
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Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
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The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly.
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