Henry David Thoreau - A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

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You cannot receive a shock unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you.

Henry David Thoreau
In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake.

Henry David Thoreau
There is on the earth no institution which Friendship has established; it is not taught by any religion; no scripture contains itsmaxims. It has no temple, nor even a solitary column. There goes a rumor that the earth is inhabited, but the shipwrecked mariner has not seen a footprint on the shore. The hunter has found only fragments of pottery and the monuments of inhabitants.

Henry David Thoreau
There is an orientalism in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but the farthest east.

Henry David Thoreau
The pickerel... the swiftest, wariest, and most ravenous of fishes.

Henry David Thoreau
It is said that a rogue does not look you in the face, neither does an honest man look at you as if he had his reputation to establish.

Henry David Thoreau
There are various tough problems yet to solve, and we must shift to live, betwixt spirit and matter, such a human life as we can.

Henry David Thoreau
I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once moreonly the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,--those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.

Henry David Thoreau
Any moral philosophy is exceedingly rare. This of Menu addresses our privacy more than most. It is a more private and familiar, and at the same time, a more public and universal word, than is spoken in parlor or pulpit nowadays.

Henry David Thoreau
The very austerity of the Brahmans is tempting to the devotional soul, as a more refined and nobler luxury. Wants so easily and gracefully satisfied seem like a more refined pleasure. Their conception of creation is peaceful as a dream.

Henry David Thoreau
The scholar may be sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort, without a corresponding energy of the body.

Henry David Thoreau
All these sounds, the crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the hum of insects at noon, are the evidence of nature's health orsound state.

Henry David Thoreau
Where shall we look for standard English, but to the words of a standard man?

Henry David Thoreau
When I visit again some haunt of my youth, I am glad to find that nature wears so well. The landscape is indeed something real, and solid, and sincere, and I have not put my foot through it yet.

Henry David Thoreau
The poet's body even is not fed like other men's, but he sometimes tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives adivine life. By the healthful and invigorating thrills of inspiration his life is preserved to a serene old age.

Henry David Thoreau
The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always a poem not printed on paper,... in the poet's life. It is what hehas become through his work. Not how is the idea expressed in stone, or on canvas or paper, is the question, but how far it has obtained form and expression in the life of the artist. His true work will not stand in any prince's gallery.

Henry David Thoreau
Friendship takes place between those who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natural and inevitable result. No professions nor advances will avail.... It is a drama in which the parties have no part to act.

Henry David Thoreau
Everything that is printed and bound in a book contains some echo at least of the best that is in literature.

Henry David Thoreau
There is no doubt that the loftiest written wisdom is either rhymed or in some way musically measured,--is, in form as well as substance, poetry; and a volume which should contain the condensed wisdom of mankind need not have one rhythmless line.

Henry David Thoreau
Always the laws of light are the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary.

Henry David Thoreau
There is reason in the distinction of civil and uncivil. The manners are sometimes so rough a rind that we doubt whether they cover any core or sap-wood at all.

Henry David Thoreau
Nothing but great antiquity can make graveyards interesting to me. I have no friends there.

Henry David Thoreau
A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature by being buried in it.

Henry David Thoreau
Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion,--as if the short spring days were an eternity.

Henry David Thoreau
It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.

Henry David Thoreau
A man's whole life is taxed for the least thing well done. It is its net result.

Henry David Thoreau
There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know.

Henry David Thoreau
I have found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources.

Henry David Thoreau
Even the utmost good-will and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. We do not wish for Friends to feed and clothe our bodies-neighbors are kind enough for that-but to do the like office to our spirits.

Henry David Thoreau
In civilization, as in a southern latitude, man degenerates at length, and yields to the incursion of more northern tribes.

Henry David Thoreau