Henry David Thoreau Quotes - Page 6

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.

Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

For if the truth were known, Love cannot speak, But only thinks and does; Though surely out 'twill leak Without the help of Greek, Or any tongue.

Le mieux que je puisse faire pour mon ami est d'être son ami.

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them.

No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to.

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.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such.

They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar

The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering from want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.

I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow before they become submissive members of society.

I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things.

We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.

Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living.

It is only when we forget our learning, do we begin to know.

Tatsächlich hat der arbeitende Mensch heute nicht mehr die Muße, sein Leben Tag für Tag wirklich sinnvoll zu gestalten.Wahrhaft menschliche Beziehungen zu seinen Mitmenschen kann er sich nicht leisten; es würde den Marktwert seiner Arbeit herabsetzen. Es fehlt ihm an Zeit, etwas anderes zu sein als eine Maschine.