Quote

I do not know what right I have to so much happiness, but rather hold it in reserve till the time of my desert.

Henry David Thoreau

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Hold
Happiness
Rather
Right
Much
Reserve
Time
Reserves
Desert
Till

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
Every man has to learn the points of the compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Keep up the fires of thought, and all will go well.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Improve every opportunity to be melancholy.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I found that they knew but little of the history of their race, and could be entertained by stories about their ancestors as readily as any way .
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men's heads and unobserved bythem. We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
What is sour in the house a bracing walk in the woods makes sweet.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Love does not analyze its object.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
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
Image
A sufficiently great and generous trust could never be abused.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Life is grand, and so are its environments of Past and Future. Would the face of nature be so serene and beautiful if man's destiny were not equally so?
Henry David Thoreau
Image
He may travel who can subsist on the wild fruits and game of the most cultivated country.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors for to dwell long upon them is to add to the offense, and repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by somewhat better, and which is as free and original as if they had not been.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
In my short experience of human life, the outward obstacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, but the institutions of the dead.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I am not afraid of praise, for I have practiced it on myself.
Henry David Thoreau