Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Neighbors

• You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this, or the like of this. I wish to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events, everyday phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbors, may inspire me, and I may dream of no heaven but that which lies about me.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dream, Lying, Inspiration

• To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have I been about mine...So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside the town, trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it express! I well-nigh sunk all my capital in it, and lost my own breath into the bargain, running in the face of it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Summer, Running, Morning

• I please myself with imagining a State at least which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Thinking, Perfect

  "Civil Disobedience". Book by Henry David Thoreau, 1849.

• How can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated again.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Knowing, Dollars

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.79, Penguin

• When you are starting away, leaving your more familiar fields, for a little adventure like a walk, you look at every object with a traveler's, or at least with historical, eyes; you pause on the first bridge, where an ordinary walk hardly commences, and begin to observe and moralize like a traveler. It is worth the while to see your native village thus sometimes, as if you were a traveler passing through it, commenting on your neighbors as strangers.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Travel, Eye, Home

  Henry David Thoreau (1962). “The journal of Henry D. Thoreau”

• The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man, - you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, - I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Believe, Men, Voice

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.19

• Even the utmost good-will and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. We do not wish for Friends to feed and clothe our bodies-neighbors are kind enough for that-but to do the like office to our spirits.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Best Friend, Kindness, Office

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Journeys, Adventures & Life in Harmony with Nature – 6 Book Collection (Illustrated): Including Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada & Canoeing in the Wilderness - North American Highlands Series”, p.199, e-artnow

• Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Soulmate, Literature, Innocence

  Henry David Thoreau (1995). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods”, p.203, Courier Corporation

• Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Majority, Neighbor

  Civil Disobedience (1849) See Coolidge 2; Douglass 7; Andrew Jackson 7; John Knox 1; Wendell Phillips 3

• Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. ... Shall we always study to obtain more, and not sometimes be content with less?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Thinking, House

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.30, Graphic Arts Books

• Do what you know you ought to do. Why should we ever go abroad, even across the way, to ask a neighbor's advice? There is a nearerneighbor within us incessantly telling us how we should behave. But we wait for the neighbor without to tell us of some false, easier way.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Waiting, Advice, Way

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1786, Delphi Classics

• My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Adventure, Gossip, Gentleman

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.333, Penguin

• It is worth the while to live respectably unto ourselves. We can possibly get along with a neighbor, even with a bedfellow, whom we respect but very little; but as soon as it comes to this, that we do not respect ourselves, then we do not get along at all, no matter how much money we are paid for halting.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Respect, Littles, Matter

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1768, Delphi Classics

• I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Lasts, Neighbor

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.88, Penguin

• The frontiers are not east or west, north or south; but wherever a man fronts a fact, though that fact be a neighbor, there is anunsettled wilderness between him and Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, farther still, between him and it. Let him build himself a log house with the bark on where he is, fronting IT, and wage there an Old French war for seven or seventy years, with Indians and Rangers, or whatever else may come between him and the reality, and save his scalp if he can.

  Henry David Thoreau

  War, Reality, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (Annotated Edition)”, p.257, Jazzybee Verlag

• We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Differences, Tea

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.416, Simon and Schuster

• 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

  Real, War, Home

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.194, Jazzybee Verlag

• I do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them. Indeed, I have reason to suspect myself on this head; and each year, as the tax-gatherer comes round, I find myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and State governments, and the spirit of the people, to discover a pretext for conformity.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Hair, Years

  Henry David Thoreau (2004). “Walden and Other Writings”, p.107, Bantam Classics

• In short, all good things are wild and free. There is something in a strain of music, whether produced by an instrument or by thehuman voice,--take the sound of a bugle in a summer night, for instance,--which by its wildness, to speak without satire, reminds me of the cries emitted by wild beasts in their native forests. It is so much of their wildness as I can understand. Give me for my friends and neighbors wild men, not tame ones. The wildness of the savage is but a faint symbol of the awful ferity with which good men and lovers meet.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Summer, Night, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (1992). “The Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.135, Rowman & Littlefield

• I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me tobe doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.... The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Office, Monsters

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.6, Xist Publishing

• As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prarie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Running, Dog, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “Walden: Life in the Woods”, p.105, Gibbs Smith

• I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust,... confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of,--sitting there now at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o'clock in the morning.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Morning, Work, Years

• It seems as if the more youthful and impressible streams can hardly resist the numerous invitations and temptations to leave theirnative beds and run down their neighbors' channels.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Running, Rivers, Temptation

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.666, Delphi Classics

• I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both inperson and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait until they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Thinking, Support

  Civil Disobedience (1849) See Coolidge 2; Douglass 7; Andrew Jackson 7; John Knox 1; Wendell Phillips 3

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