Quote

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

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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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I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.
Henry David Thoreau
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Our molting season, like that of the fouls, must be a crisis in our lives.
Henry David Thoreau
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I do not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster.
Henry David Thoreau
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The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what we do and yet how much is not done by us!
Henry David Thoreau
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If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am constantly doing by being what I am.
Henry David Thoreau
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The constant abrasion and decay of our lives makes the soil of our future growth.
Henry David Thoreau
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The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar institutions and edicts for his defense, but the toughest son ofearth and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance his fainting companions will recognize the God in him. It is the worshipers of beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world.
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We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.
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Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. Why, nature is but another name for health.
Henry David Thoreau
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The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.
Henry David Thoreau
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But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself.
Henry David Thoreau
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Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution - such call I good books.
Henry David Thoreau
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Since you are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveler, I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism.
Henry David Thoreau
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Everyone must believe in something. I believe I'll go canoeing.
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There are various, nay, incredible faiths why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes.
Henry David Thoreau
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Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.
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What is wanted is men of principle, who recognize a higher law than the decision of the majority. The marines and the militia whose bodies were used lately were not men of sense nor of principle in a high moral sense they were not men at all.
Henry David Thoreau
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The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
Henry David Thoreau