Henry David Thoreau - Time Quotes

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What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground.

Henry David Thoreau
And pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears of green sweet corn boiled, with the addition of salt?

Henry David Thoreau
If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the mythologies, those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks of poems, so to speak, the world's inheritance,... these are the materials and hints for a history of the rise and progress of the race; how, from the condition of ants, it arrived at the condition of men, and arts were gradually invented. Let a thousand surmises shed some light on this story.

Henry David Thoreau
The true finish is the work of time, and the use to which a thing is put. The elements are still polishing the pyramids.

Henry David Thoreau
Take Time by the forelock. It is also the safest part to take a serpent by.

Henry David Thoreau
Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of many men, is but a sort of locomotiveness; they move a side at a time, and man, by his machinery, is meeting the horse and the ox half-way.

Henry David Thoreau
Winter is the time for study, you know, and the colder it is the more studious we are.

Henry David Thoreau
As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of today is present, so some flitting perspectives and demi-experiencesof the life that is in nature are in time veritably future, or rather outside of time, perennial, young, divine, in the wind and rain which never die.

Henry David Thoreau
It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time.

Henry David Thoreau
I have climbed several higher mountains without guide or path, and have found, as might be expected, that it takes only more time and patience commonly than to travel the smoothest highway.

Henry David Thoreau
It will be seen that we contemplate a time when man's will shall be law to the physical world, and he shall no longer be deterredby such abstractions as time and space, height and depth, weight and hardness, but shall indeed be the lord of creation.

Henry David Thoreau
How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a slight outrage against universal laws.

Henry David Thoreau
Translate a book a dozen times from one language to another, and what becomes of its style? Most books would be worn out and disappear in this ordeal. The pen which wrote it is soon destroyed, but the poem survives.

Henry David Thoreau
If I deny the authority of the State when it presents my tax bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard, this makes it impossible for a man to live honestly, and at the same time comfortably, in outward respects.

Henry David Thoreau
Time & Co. are, after all, the only quite honest and trustworthy publishers that we know.

Henry David Thoreau
When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.

Henry David Thoreau
Unless we do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but apprentices, and not yet masters of the art of life.

Henry David Thoreau
Men seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuilding the works behind them, as they are battered down by the encroachments of time; but while they loiter, they and their works both fall prey to the arch enemy.

Henry David Thoreau
My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will.

Henry David Thoreau
They who assert the purest right, and consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt State, commonly have not spent much time accumulating property. The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; and it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it.

Henry David Thoreau
Waves of a serene life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather.

Henry David Thoreau
When asked about life after death:
One world at a time.

Henry David Thoreau
He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.

Henry David Thoreau
It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindus, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison might help to liberalize the faith of men. This is a work which Time will surely edit, reserved to crown the labors of the printing-press. This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth.

Henry David Thoreau
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. If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.

Henry David Thoreau