Henry David Thoreau quotes · page 5

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Henry David Thoreau

Various
We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.
3.8 · 32 votes · 17 reads
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Art and Culture
We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.
4.2 · 7 votes · 160 reads
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Feelings
We are made happy when reason can discover no occasion for it. The memory of some past moments is more persuasive than the experience of present ones. There have been visions of such breadth and brightness that these motes were invisible in their light.
4.2 · 41 votes · 24 reads
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Time
We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.
3.1 · 26 votes · 153 reads
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Nature
We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.
4.6 · 8 votes · 144 reads
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Virtues
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.
3.9 · 13 votes · 129 reads
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Virtues
We hate the kindness which we understand.
4.2 · 24 votes · 112 reads
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Feelings
We have not so good a right to hate any as our Friend.
3.2 · 18 votes · 67 reads
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Virtues
We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.
4.9 · 24 votes · 42 reads
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Various
We live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think we thus lose some respect for one another.
4.5 · 55 votes · 74 reads
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Feelings
We must have infinite faith in each other. If we have not, we must never let it leak out that we have not.
3.3 · 14 votes · 92 reads
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Society
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.
4.0 · 12 votes · 195 reads
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Virtues
We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.
3.5 · 14 votes · 33 reads
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Various
We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.
4.8 · 50 votes · 171 reads
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Time
We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.
4.1 · 21 votes · 28 reads
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Thought and Reason
We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!
3.2 · 39 votes · 124 reads
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Various
We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.
3.8 · 60 votes · 178 reads
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Society
We were born to succeed, not to fail.
4.7 · 44 votes · 64 reads
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Various
We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.
3.3 · 22 votes · 115 reads
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Society
Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.
3.6 · 6 votes · 44 reads
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Art and Culture
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
4.7 · 47 votes · 69 reads
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Nature
What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to
3.1 · 57 votes · 129 reads
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Virtues
What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm.
4.6 · 25 votes · 113 reads
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Thought and Reason
What sort of philosophers are we, who know absolutely nothing about the origin and destiny of cats?
3.3 · 26 votes · 50 reads
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Government and Politics
Whatever the human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation can commit the least act of injustice against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.
3.4 · 50 votes · 107 reads
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Virtues
Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.
3.3 · 28 votes · 62 reads
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Various
Write while the heat is in you. The Writerwho postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
4.9 · 43 votes · 134 reads
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Society
Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.
4.2 · 13 votes · 11 reads
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Feelings
You must get your living by loving, or at least half your life is a failure.
4.0 · 5 votes · 161 reads
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Time
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.
4.2 · 43 votes · 92 reads
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Time
Youth gets together with their materials to build a bridge to the moon or maybe a palace on earth; then in middle age they decide to build a woodshed with them instead.
4.7 · 9 votes · 192 reads
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Page 5 of 5 · 191 quotes

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