Quote

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

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
People
Leave
Traveler
Since
Readers
Talk
Near
Reading
Miles
Home
Criticism
Come
Reader
Much
Short
Retain
Time
Thousand
Flattery

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
At death our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart farther from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
To regret deeply is to live afresh.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Let your capital be simplicity and contentment.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.
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
I did not go to Boston, for with regard to that place I sympathize with one of my neighbors, an old man, who has not been there since the last war, when he was compelled to go. No, I have a real genius for staying at home.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I seem to have dodged all my days with one or two persons, and lived upon expectation,--as if the bud would surely blossom and soI am content to live.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
That is a pathetic inquiry among travelers and geographers after the site of ancient Troy. It is not near where they think it is.When a thing is decayed and gone, how indistinct must be the place it occupied!
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Love is the profoundest of secrets. Divulged, even to the beloved, it is no longer Love. As if it were merely I that loved you. When love ceases, then it is divulged.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The most difficult thing to understand during conversation is silence.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Fame is not just. She never finely or discriminatingly praises, but coarsely hurrahs.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Do not engage to find things as you think they are.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
How earthy old people become --moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life, round which the vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. Man would desecrate it by his touch, and so the beauty of the world remains veiled to him. He needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalized, on the soil of earth.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must bestripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living laid for a foundation.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched.
Henry David Thoreau