Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Character

• Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wisdom, Travel, Character

• Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Love, Graduation, Dream

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.238, Courier Corporation

• What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

• We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Home, Adventure

  Henry David Thoreau, Laura Ross (2009). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods: Bold-faced Ideas for Living a Truly Transcendent Life”, p.273, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

• All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Character, Thinking, Voting

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.101, Simon and Schuster

• Every wild apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to man! So are human beings, referred to the highest standard, the celestial fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate; and only the most persistent and strongest genius defends itself and prevails, sends a tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers and statesmen thus spring up in the country pastures, and outlast the hosts of unoriginal men.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Country, Children, Spring

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.399, Simon and Schuster

• The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Integrity, Character, Ethics

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.199, Delphi Classics

• Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Character, Men, Flesh And Blood

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.159, Xist Publishing

• We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Character, Adequate, Language

• How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seedtime of character?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Character, Harvest

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.134, Courier Corporation

• Pity the man who has a character to support - it is worse than a large family - he is silent poor indeed.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Family, Character, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2077, Delphi Classics

• We falsely attribute to men a determined character - putting together all their yesterdays - and averaging them - we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support - it is worse than a large family - he is the silent poor indeed.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Family, Character, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2077, Delphi Classics

• The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Time, Character, Government

  Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.3, Hayes Barton Press

• I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching-thang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again."

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Religious, Kings

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.140

• Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concretic layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society...may unexpectedly come forth...to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!...Such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn...Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beautiful, Summer, Morning

  Walden ch. 18 (1854)

• We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Character, Men, Tragedy

  Henry David Thoreau (2002). “Walden: Or, Life in the Woods”, p.26, Courier Corporation

• We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been times when our friends' thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Kindness, Character, Real Friends

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “The Illustrated "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"”, p.259, Princeton University Press

• Much of our poetry has the very best manners, but no character.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Character, Poetry, Style

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.279, Delphi Classics

• Our vices always lie in the direction of our virtues, and in their best estate are but plausible imitations of the latter.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Lying, Character, Vices

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.222, Xist Publishing

• White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.... They are too pure to have a market value;they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they! We never learned meanness of them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beautiful, Character, Lakes

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience: Top American Literary”, p.124, 谷月社

• I often accuse my finest acquaintances of an immense frivolity; for, while there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we donot teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual; however, for we do not habitually demand any more of each other.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Honesty, Character

• When a shadow flits across the landscape of the soul where is the substance?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Character, Soul, Shadow

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.373

• What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and sublimest truth?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Truth, Character, Men

• The more supple vagabond, too, is sure to appear on the least rumor of such a gathering, and the next day to disappear, and go into his hole like the seventeen-year locust, in an ever-shabby coat, though finer than the farmer's best, yet never dressed.... He especially is the creature of the occasion. He empties both his pockets and his character into the stream, and swims in such a day. He dearly loves the social slush. There is no reserve of soberness in him.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Character, Years, Next Day

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.241, Xist Publishing

• The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Mother, Book, Character

  Henry David Thoreau (1939). “Walden: or, Life in the woods”

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