Quote

The richest gifts we can bestow are the least marketable. We hate the kindness which we understand.

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
Understand
Marketable
Hate
Bestow
Richest
Gifts
Charity
Kindness
Friendship
Least

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
The birds I heard today, which, fortunately, did not come within the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creation.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Thank God, they cannot cut down the clouds!
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We make needless ado about capital punishment,--taking lives, when there is no life to take.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has left.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The higher the mountain on which you stand, the less change in the prospect from year to year, from age to age. Above a certain height there is no change.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect...always when I have done I feel it would have been better if I had not fished.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
If there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the State itself would hesitate to demand it of him. But the rich man--not to make any invidious comparison--is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.... Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
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
Image
The murmurs of many a famous river on the other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to more distant dwellers on its banksmany a poet's stream, floating the helms and shields of heroes on its bosom.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Friends are made for caring and sharing. Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic, and his trappings will have to serve that mood too.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge college is as solitary as a dervis in the desert.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I mean that they (students) should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics.
Henry David Thoreau