Quote

I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again.

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
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Honest
Presses
Anything
Quite
Press
Firsts
Powerful
Simplicity
First
Getting
Legs
Done
Help
Honesty
Sometimes
Simple
Despair
Squeeze
Would
Upon
Notion
Notions
Men
Soon
Passed
World
Helping

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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We bless and curse ourselves.
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We never exchange more than three words with a Friend in our lives on that level to which our thoughts and feelings almost habitually rise.
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Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.
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If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.
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Left to herself, nature is always more or less civilized, and delights in a certain refinement but where the axe has encroached upon the edge of the forest, the dead and unsightly limbs of the pine, which she had concealed with green banks of verdure, are exposed to sight.
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Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love and in proportion to our truthfulness and confidence in one another, our lives are divine and miraculous, and answer to our ideal. . . . Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.
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Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I can only walk with sufficient carelessness I am sure to be filled.
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Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.
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I walk out into a nature such as the old prophets and poets Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name it America, but it is not America. Neither Americus Vespucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer account of it in Mythology than in any history of America so called that I have seen.
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Friendship takes place between those who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and inevitable result. No professions nor advances will avail.... It is a drama in which the parties have no part to act.
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This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest posterity, content with slightly and religiously retouchingthe old material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity.
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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 lover wants no partiality. He says, Be so kind as to be just.
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So far as my experience goes, travelers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the difficulty is imaginary for what's the hurry?
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The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest.
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What an admirable training is science for the more active warfare of life! Indeed, the unchallenged bravery which these studies imply, is far more impressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior.
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Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
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The silence sings. It is musical. I remember a night when it was audible. I heard the unspeakable.
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If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?
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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