Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.
As for Clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility.
The intercourse of the sexes, I have dreamed, is incredibly beautiful, too fair to be remembered. I have had thoughts about it, but they are among the most fleeting and irrecoverable in my experience.
But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness. It has a constantand imperishable moral, and to the scholar it yields a classic result.
The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The poet to-day, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the accumulated learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer.
We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice. Where is the skillful swordsman who can give clean wounds, and not rip up his work with the other edge?
The only government that I recognize--and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army--is that power thatestablishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.
The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?
The divinity in man is the true vestal fire of the temple which is never permitted to go out, but burns as steadily and with as pure a flame on the obscure provincial altar as in Numa's temple at Rome.
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.
In society you will not find health, but in nature. Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of nature, all our faces would bepale and livid. Society is always diseased, and the best is the most so.
You ask particularly after my health. I suppose that I have not many months to live; but, of course, I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.
The Indian...stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison.
I already, and for weeks afterward, felt my nature the coarser for this part of my woodland experience, and was reminded that ourlife should be lived as tenderly and daintily as one would pluck a flower.
No man who acts from a sense of duty ever puts the lesser duty above the greater. No man has the desire and the ability to work onhigh things, but he has also the ability to build himself a high staging.
I noticed, as I had done before, that there was a lull among the mosquitoes about midnight, and that they began again in the morning. Nature is thus merciful. But apparently they need rest as well as we.
If thousands are thrown out of employment, it suggests that they were not well employed. Why don't they take the hint? It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!
It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some "Symmes' Hole" by which to get at the inside at last.
This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments?
It becomes the moralist, too, to inquire what man might do to improve and beautify the system; what to make the stars shine more brightly, the sun more cheery and joyous, the moon more placid and content.
I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength.
I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extravagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limit of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced.
In our daily intercourse with men, our nobler faculties are dormant and suffered to rust. None will pay us the compliment to expect nobleness from us. Though we have gold to give, they demand only copper.
Everything counts for gain when we are cosmically awake. Nothing counts, unless we are awake. No enjoyments last, no successes satisfy, no gains have meaning unless accomplished in a state of wakefulness.
There would be this advantage in traveling in your own country, even in your own neighborhood, that you would be so thoroughly prepared to understand what you saw you would make fewer traveler's mistakes.
If a man were to place himself in an attitude to bear manfully the greatest evil that can be inflicted on him, he would find suddenly that there was no such evil to bear; his brave back would go a-begging.
If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services.
Probe the universe in a myriad of points. ... He is a wise man who has taken many views; to whom stones and plants and animals and a myriad of objects have each suggesting something, contributed something.
When some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered yes-- remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education-- make them hunters.
I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.
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, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust.
If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls, and there arenight owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business.
The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all things proclaim. It is seemingly instantaneous at last.
A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double; the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the fore part plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her till you tread upon it.
The murmurs of many a famous river on the other side of the globe reach even to us here, as to more distant dwellers on its banks;many a poet's stream, floating the helms and shields of heroes on its bosom.
I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust.
There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man,--all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners!
Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.
I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.
Simplicity is the law of Nature for man as well as for flowers. When the tapestry (corolla) of the nuptial bed (calyx) is excessive, luxuriant, it is unproductive. The fertile flowers are single, not double.
For one that comes with a pencil to sketch or sing, a thousand come with an axe or rifle. What a coarse and imperfect use Indiansand hunters make of nature! No wonder that their race is so soon exterminated.
A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally, as animals conceive at certain seasons their kind only. We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.
The coward wants resolution, which the brave man can do without. He recognizes no faith above a creed, thinking this straw by which he is moored does him good service, because his sheet anchor does not drag.
There is not one kind of food for all men. You must and you will feed those faculties which you exercise. The laborer whose body is weary does not require the same food with the scholar whose brain is weary.
Tis now the twenty-third of march, And this warm sun takes out the starch Of winter's pinafore - Methinks The Very pasture gladly drinks A health to spring, and while it sips It faintly smacks a myriad lips.
I do not value any view of the universe into which man and the institutions of man enter very largely and absorb much of the attention. Man is but the place where I stand, and the prospect hence is infinite.
The student may read Homer or Ãâ schylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that hein some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages.
That is a pathetic inquiry among travelers and geographers after the site of ancient Troy. It is not near where they think it is.When a thing is decayed and gone, how indistinct must be the place it occupied!
I once found a kernel of corn in the middle of a deep wood by Walden, tucked in behind a lichen on a pine, about as high as my head, either by a crow or a squirrel. It was a mile at least from any corn-field.