Art is to be free. Design is to fix.
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.
Henry David Thoreau
If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.
It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
Beware of all enterprises that require a new set of clothes.
Pity the man who has a character to support --it is worse than a large family -- he is silent poor indeed.
The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.
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.
The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it.
The sun is but a morning star.
We are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspected.
If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.
Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces of those who live in true meekness.
A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as this brain.
Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.
To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
Associate reverently, as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.
How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.
Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.
Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.
Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It's thin current slides away, but eternity remains.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.
That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest?
He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.
Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.
Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love.
It takes two to speak truth -- one to speak, and another to hear.
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!
The universe is wider than our views of it.
One farmer says to me, You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with; and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.
I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another s. We see so much only as we possess.
There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.
I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.
All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.
The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.
Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
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