Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe.
How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding ; How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile.
I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse.
You must ascend a mountain to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body, for it is at home there, though you are not.
There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know.
We should seek to be fellow students with the pupil, and should learn of, as well as with him, if we would be most helpful to him.
But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little have been tried.
I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak.
I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men. The former are so much the freer.
Expect no trivial truth from me, unless I am on the witness- stand. I will come as near to lying as you can drive a coach and four.
I am not afraid that I shall exaggerate the value and significance of life, but that I shall not be up to the occasion which it is.
In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn.
Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it.
The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky.
I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.
I know of no redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved I fall back on to this ground.
While the Governor, and the Mayor, and countless officers of the Commonwealth are at large, the champions of liberty are imprisoned.
In most books, the I, of first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference.
If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth
I had a classmate who fitted for college by the lamps of a lighthouse, which was more light, we think, than the University afforded.
Men must speak English who can write Sanskrit; they must speak a modern language who write, perchance, an ancient and universal one.
If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.
Men spend the best parts of their lives earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.
I love you not as something private and personal, which is my own, but as something universal and worthy of love which I have found.
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.
I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.
It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are yourself the slave-driver.
Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.
Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable.
As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.
I have seen more men than usual, lately; and, well as I was acquainted with one, I am surprised to find what vulgar fellows they are.
Look not to legislatures and churches for your guidance, nor to any soulless incorporated bodies, but to inspirited or inspired ones.
It is impossible to give a soldier a good education without making him a deserter. His natural foe is the government that drills him.
It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.
Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there?
I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next.
We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads,--and then we can hardly see anything else.
In the summer we lay up a stock of experiences for the winter, as the squirrel of nuts?something for conversation in winter evenings.
There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.
It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.
Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.
Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them - that it was a vain endeavor?
Instead of the scream of a fish hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a country to its progress.
To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has left.
Why does it [government] always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?
A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate.
Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th,1847.
To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence.
Ninety-nine one-hundredths of our lives we are mere hedgers and ditchers, but from time to time we meet with reminders of our destiny.