Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
It is remarkable that there are few men so well employed, so much to their minds, but that a little money or fame would commonly buy them off from their present pursuit.
Henry David Thoreau
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Wells
Pursuit
Well
Minds
Much
Fame
Mind
Labor
Would
Present
Commonly
Men
Money
Employed
Littles
Remarkable
Little
Independence
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also.
Henry David Thoreau
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment to toe that line.
Henry David Thoreau
Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle, it is as if it were redeemed. When the desire to be better than we are is really sincere we are instantly elevated, and so far better already.
Henry David Thoreau
No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes: yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.
Henry David Thoreau
If you give money, spend yourself with it.
Henry David Thoreau
One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public. He will be stranger to him as he is more familiar to the audience. The longest intimacy could not foretell how he would behave then
Henry David Thoreau
I love nature, I love the landscape, because it is so sincere. It never cheats me. It never jests. It is cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and relie on the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.
Henry David Thoreau
Nature is not made after such a fashion as we would have her. We piously exaggerate her wonders, as the scenery around our home.
Henry David Thoreau
To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
Henry David Thoreau
For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms and did my duty faithfully, though I never received payment for it.
Henry David Thoreau
Today...the bluebirds, old and young, have revisited their box, as if they would fain repeat the summer without intervention of winter, if Nature would let them.
Henry David Thoreau
Our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed with error than our sympathies.
Henry David Thoreau
No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher.
Henry David Thoreau
History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning ofthings, which natural history might with reason assume to do but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,--when did burdock and plantain sprout first?
Henry David Thoreau
The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down.
Henry David Thoreau
Shall a man not have his spring as well as the plants?
Henry David Thoreau
What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado is anywhere but where he lives.
Henry David Thoreau
Show me two villages, one embowered in trees and blazing with all the glories of October, the other a merely trivial and treelesswaste, or with only a single tree or two for suicides, and I shall be sure that in the latter will be found the most starved and bigoted religionists and the most desperate drinkers.
Henry David Thoreau
Music never stops it is only the listening that is intermittent.
Henry David Thoreau
