Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 63

• Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Rivers, Perfect, Tree

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.56, Courier Corporation

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• With all your science can you tell me how it is, and when it is, that light comes into the soul?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Learning, Light, Soul

  Henry David Thoreau, Robert Bly (1992). “The Winged Life: The Poetic Voice of Henry David Thoreau”, Perennial

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• Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are ... rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Knowledge, Science, Light

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.419, Simon and Schuster

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• Fishing has been styled 'a contemplative man's recreation,' ... and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Science, Men, Fishing

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• The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral life of its devotee.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Science, Biographies, Facts

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “The Illustrated "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"”, p.362, Princeton University Press

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• If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Ignorance, Bridges, Rivers

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.72, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Every sacred book, successively, has been accepted in the faith that it was to be the final resting-place of the sojourning soul;but after all, it was but a caravansary which supplied refreshment to the traveler, and directed him farther on his way to Isphahan or Bagdat. Thank God, no Hindoo tyranny prevailed at the framing of the world, but we are freemen of the universe, and not sentenced to any caste.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Freedom, Book, Soul

  Henry David Thoreau, Bradford Torrey, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (1906). “The Writings of Henry David Thoreau ....”

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• There are various, nay, incredible faiths; why should we be alarmed at any of them? What man believes, God believes.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Believe, Men, Religion

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.486, Simon and Schuster

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• It is true, these Roman Catholics, priests and all, impress me as a people who have fallen far behind the significance of their symbols. It is as if an ox had strayed into a church and were trying to bethink himself. Nevertheless, they are capable of reverence; but we Yankees are a people in whom this sentiment has nearly died out, and in this respect we cannot bethink ourselves even as oxen.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Yankees, Oxen, People

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Yankee in Canada”, p.17, Graphic Arts Books

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• The journalists think that they cannot say too much in favor of such "improvements" in husbandry; it is a safe theme, like piety;but as for the beauty of one of these "model farms," I would as lief see a patent churn and a man turning it. They are, commonly, places merely where somebody is making money, it may be counterfeiting.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Thinking, Religion

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.158

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• The tavern will compare favorably with the church. The church is the place where prayers and sermons are delivered, but the tavernis where they are to take effect, and if the former are good, the latter cannot be bad.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Prayer, Religion, Church

  Henry David Thoreau (1868). “Excursions”, p.108

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• A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood-chopping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the woods, will not be a good subjectfor Christianity. The New Testament may be a choice book to him on some, but not on all or most of his days. He will rather go a-fishing in his leisure hours. The Apostles, though they were fishers too, were of the solemn race of sea-fishers, and never trolled for pickerel on inland streams.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Bible, Faith, Book

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.96, Penguin

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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.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Feelings, Three

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.110, Penguin

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• It is impossible to say all that we think, even to our truest Friend. We may bid him farewell forever sooner than complain, for our complaint is too well grounded to be uttered.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Truth, Communication

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.119, Penguin

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• There is on the earth no institution which Friendship has established; it is not taught by any religion; no scripture contains itsmaxims. It has no temple, nor even a solitary column. There goes a rumor that the earth is inhabited, but the shipwrecked mariner has not seen a footprint on the shore. The hunter has found only fragments of pottery and the monuments of inhabitants.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Bible, Rumor

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.188, Xist Publishing

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• For a companion, I require one who will make an equal demand on me with my own genius. Such a one will always be rightly tolerant.It is suicide, and corrupts good manners, to welcome any less than this. I value and trust those who love and praise my aspiration rather than my performance. If you would not stop to look at me, but look whither I am looking, and farther, then my education could not dispense with your company.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Suicide, Ambition

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.212, Delphi Classics

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• I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise til noon, rapt in a revery.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Summer, Morning, Taken

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience: Top American Literary”, p.70, 谷月社

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• What shall we think of a government to which all the truly brave and just men in the land are enemies, standing between it and those whom it oppresses? A government that pretends to be Christian and crucifies a million Christs every day!

  Henry David Thoreau

  Christian, Jesus, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.249, Graphic Arts Books

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• I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Dream, Night, Sabbath

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• Every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition, has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food

  Henry David Thoreau

  Philosophical, Animal, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.131, Graphic Arts Books

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• The dry grasses are not dead for me. A beautiful form has as much life at one season as another.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beautiful, Dry, Grass

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2216, Delphi Classics

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• When the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant to compare the first tender signs of the infant year just peeping forth with the stately beauty of the withered vegetation which had withstood the winterdecent weeds, at least, which widowed Nature wears.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Weed, Spring, Winter

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• I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Happiness, Beautiful, Home

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Selections from the Journals”, p.34, Courier Corporation

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• 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.

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• A man's social and spiritual discipline must answer to his corporeal. He must lean on a friend who has a hard breast, as he wouldlie on a hard bed. He must drink cold water for his only beverage. So he must not hear sweetened and colored words, but pure and refreshing truths. He must daily bathe in truth cold as spring water, not warmed by the sympathy of friends.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Spiritual, Spring

  Henry David Thoreau (2017). “HENRY DAVID THOREAU – The Man, The Philosopher & The Trailblazer (Illustrated): Biographies, Memoirs, Autobiographical Books & Personal Letters (Including Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, A Yankee in Canada…)”, p.1302, e-artnow

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