|
Henry David Thoreau - From the Achievement category:
The secret of achievement is to hold a picture of a successful outcome in mind. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Aging category:
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Art category:
Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man's art would also be wild or natural in a good sense. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Art category:
The highest condition of art is artlessness. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Beauty category:
One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Beginning category:
Only that day dawns to which we are awake. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Books category:
To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any other exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent... (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Books category:
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Business category:
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Business category:
There is nothing more opposed to poetry, ay, more opposed to life itself, than this incessant business. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Change category:
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Character category:
You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Courage category:
Whatever your sex or position, life is a battle in which you are to show your pluck, and woe be to the coward. Whether passed on a bed of sickness or a tented field, it is ever the same fair play and admits no foolish distinction. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Criticism category:
Public opinion is a weak tyrant, compared with our private opinion – what a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates his fate. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Culture category:
If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I'm sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Desperation category:
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Desperation category:
Do not despair of life. Think of the fox, prowling in a winter night to satisfy his hunger. His race survives; I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Destiny category:
What a man thinks of himself - that is what determines, or rather indicates, his fate. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Determination category:
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Disappointment category:
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Dreams category:
Dreams are the touchstones of our character. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Dreams category:
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Dreams category:
-Journal, August 30, 1856...
It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Drunkenness category:
Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Earth category:
Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth! (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Editing category:
Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Education category:
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Experience category:
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live! (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Experience category:
However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Fame category:
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Fashion category:
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Freedom category:
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Friendship category:
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Friendship category:
The language of friendship is not words but meanings. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Genius category:
No man ever followed his genius 'til it mislead him. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Genius category:
What is called genius is the abundance of life and health. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Goals category:
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Goals category:
In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Goodness category:
Be not simply good; be good for something. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Goodness category:
Goodness is the only investment that never fails. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Goodness category:
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. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Guidance category:
It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Imagination category:
It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Imagination category:
It is the marriage of the soul with Nature that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to imagination. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Imagination category:
The world is but a canvas to the imagination. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Indolence category:
The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Innocence category:
Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Inspiration category:
Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Integrity category:
Be true to your work, your word, and your friend. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Intellect category:
Why then was I not told, the brain can hold, / In its tiny Ivory cell, God's heaven and Hell. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Interest category:
It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Knowledge category:
To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Leisure category:
A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Life category:
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Life category:
I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and to suck out all the marrow of life, to put to rout all that was not life, and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Loneliness category:
We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Love category:
There must be the... generating force of Love behind every effort destined to be successful. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Mediums category:
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Mistakes category:
One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Money category:
All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Morality category:
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Nature category:
We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain... (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Nature category:
In wilderness is preservation of the world. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Obscurity category:
Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters? (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Observation category:
The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears to hear it. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Opposites category:
Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it? (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Perception category:
The perception of beauty is a moral test. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Pets category:
It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Philosophy category:
To be a philosopher... is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Philosophy category:
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates... simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Poetry category:
The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Poetry category:
The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Poetry category:
My life has been the poem I would have writ, / But I could not both live and utter it. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Prayer category:
The man who does not betake himself at once and desperately to sawing is called a loafer, though he may be knocking at the doors of heaven all the while. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Pricing category:
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Procrastination category:
Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Profession category:
My profession is always to be alert, to attend to all the oratorios and the operas in nature. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Prosperity category:
Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Purpose category:
It is not enough to be industrious, so are the ants. What are you industrious about? (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Quality category:
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Religion category:
'Henry, have you made your peace with God?' (Calvinistic Aunt) 'I did not know we had ever quarrelled, Aunt.' (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Revelation category:
Go not to the object; let the object come to you. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Rewards category:
The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Routine category:
Routine is a ground to stand on, a wall to retreat to; we cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against it. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Rules category:
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. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Rules category:
There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Sculpture category:
The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Searching category:
Some men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish that they are after. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Searching category:
-Journal, August 30, 1856...
I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador any greater wildness that in some recess of Concord, i.e. than I import into it. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Seeing category:
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Seeing category:
The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Seeing category:
I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Senses category:
Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature – daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it – rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks... Contact! Contact! Who are we? What are we? (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Silence category:
Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment... (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Simplicity category:
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Sleep category:
I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Solitude category:
I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Success category:
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Success category:
Men are born to succeed, not fail. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Success category:
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Success category:
If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal – that is your success. All nature is your congratulation... (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Technology category:
Men have become the tools of their tools. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Thinking category:
A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as his brain. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Thinking category:
To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Thought category:
Whatever sentence will bear to be read twice, we may be sure was thought twice. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Thought category:
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Time category:
Who thinks that they can kill time without injuring eternity? (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Time category:
A man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of life getting his living. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Time category:
Time is but the stream I go a-fishin' in. I drink at it, but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Travel category:
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till the other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Trust category:
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Truth category:
Truth is always paradoxical. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Truth category:
It takes two to speak the truth – one to speak and another to hear. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Truth category:
No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Tyranny category:
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Uniqueness category:
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Universe category:
The universe is wider than our views of it. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Universe category:
The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Vision category:
I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Wisdom category:
A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Wisdom category:
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Words category:
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Words category:
The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Work category:
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; there is where they should be. Now put foundations under them. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Worth category:
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. (Henry David Thoreau)
Henry David Thoreau - From the Writing category:
When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc... I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural... (Henry David Thoreau)
| 
