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The youth gets together his materials
to build a bridge to the moon,
or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth,
and, at length, the middle-aged man
concludes to build a woodshed with them.
- Henry David Thoreau
Related topics: Life Human-Nature Psychology Wisdom Age Perspective Simplicity
Friends... they cherish one another's hopes.
They are kind to one another's dreams.
- Henry David Thoreau
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me
was when one asked me what I thought,
and attended to my answer.
- Henry David Thoreau
Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through,
and you could go in the back way.
- Henry David Thoreau
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
- Henry David Thoreau
We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.
- Henry David Thoreau
There is danger that we lose sight of
what our friend is absolutely,
while considering what she is to us alone.
- Henry David Thoreau
The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.
It is an intelligence above language.
- Henry David Thoreau
The heart is forever inexperienced.
- Henry David Thoreau
Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
- Henry David Thoreau
Ignorance and bungling with love
are better than wisdom and skill without.
- Henry David Thoreau
Not until we are lost
do we begin to understand ourselves.
- Henry David Thoreau
Do what you love.
Know your own bone;
gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it,
and gnaw it still.
- Henry David Thoreau
May we so love as never to have occasion
to repent of our love!
- Henry David Thoreau
Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl:
it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.
- Henry David Thoreau
This world is but a canvas to our imagination.
- Henry David Thoreau
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?
- Henry David Thoreau
Every generation laughs at the old fashions,
but follows religiously the new.
- Henry David Thoreau
I have a great deal of company in the house,
especially in the morning when nobody calls.
- Henry David Thoreau
Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
- Henry David Thoreau
Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
- Henry David Thoreau
The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
- Henry David Thoreau
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
- Henry David Thoreau
Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
- Henry David Thoreau
How could youths better learn to live
than by at once trying the experiment of living?
- Henry David Thoreau
What is called genius is the
abundance of life and health.
- Henry David Thoreau
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself,
than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
- Henry David Thoreau
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth,
so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind.
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
Those whom we can love, we can hate;
to others we are indifferent.
- Henry David Thoreau
If misery loves company, misery has company enough.
- Henry David Thoreau
An unclean person is universally a slothful one.
- Henry David Thoreau
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil
to one who is striking at the root.
- Henry David Thoreau
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
- Henry David Thoreau
The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.
- Henry David Thoreau
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's
most effective criticism until you provoke him.
Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
- Henry David Thoreau
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation
and go to the grave with the song still in them.
- Henry David Thoreau
To a philosopher all news,
as it is called, is gossip,
and they who edit and read it
are old women over their tea.
- Henry David Thoreau
Make the most of your regrets;
never smother your sorrow,
but tend and cherish it till it comes to have
a separate and integral interest.
To regret deeply is to live afresh.
- Henry David Thoreau
In human intercourse the tragedy begins,
not when there is misunderstanding about words,
but when silence is not understood.
- Henry David Thoreau
The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
- Henry David Thoreau
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
- Henry David Thoreau
Simplify, simplify.
- Henry David Thoreau
Live the life you've dreamed.
- Henry David Thoreau
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
Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
- Henry David Thoreau
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth?
Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
- Henry David Thoreau
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal,
and then leap in the dark to our success.
- Henry David Thoreau
Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit
which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.
- Henry David Thoreau
As you simplify your life,
the laws of the universe will be simpler;
solitude will not be solitude,
poverty will not be poverty,
nor weakness weakness.
- Henry David Thoreau
What is once well done is done forever.
- Henry David Thoreau
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
- Henry David Thoreau
We should distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
- Henry David Thoreau
That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.
- Henry David Thoreau
I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes,
and not rather a new wearer of clothes.
- Henry David Thoreau
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
- Henry David Thoreau
Where there is an observatory and a telescope,
we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.
- Henry David Thoreau
Do not be too moral.
You may cheat yourself out of much life.
So aim above morality.
Be not simply good;
be good for something.
- Henry David Thoreau
A man's interest in a single bluebird
is worth more than a complete but dry list
of the fauna and flora of a town.
- Henry David Thoreau
Only that day dawns to which we are awake.
- Henry David Thoreau
If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right.
Men will believe what they see.
- Henry David Thoreau
Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.
- Henry David Thoreau
If it is surely the means to the highest end we know,
can any work be humble or disgusting?
Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder,
the means by which we are translated?
- Henry David Thoreau
I have found that hollow,
which even I had relied on for solid.
- Henry David Thoreau
In my afternoon walk I would fain forget
all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.
- Henry David Thoreau
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
- Henry David Thoreau
We shall see but a little way if
we require to understand what we see.
- Henry David Thoreau
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
- Henry David Thoreau
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
- Henry David Thoreau
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake,
not by mechanical aid, but by
an infinite expectation of the dawn.
- Henry David Thoreau
The perception of beauty is a moral test.
- Henry David Thoreau
Nature will bear the closest inspection.
She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf,
and take an insect view of its plain.
- Henry David Thoreau
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