Henry David Thoreau Quotes.
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
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.
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.
There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?
The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.
Every day or two, I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs.
It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.
Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.
The most difficult thing to understand during conversation is silence.
Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.
The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.
Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.
