Famous Quotes & Sayings

Henry David Thoreau

The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild, and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World

Henry David Thoreau

In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil,--not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements, and modes of culture only!

Henry David Thoreau

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

Henry David Thoreau

You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.

Henry David Thoreau

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.

Henry David Thoreau

The voice of nature is always encouraging.

Henry David Thoreau

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.

Johannes Tauler

In the most intimate, hidden and innermost ground of the soul, God is always essentially, actively, and substantially present. Here the soul possesses everything by grace which God possesses by nature.

Johannes Kepler

Nature uses as little as possible of anything.

Conrad Aiken

The truth--a hideous spectacle!

Sydney J. Harris

Honesty consists of the unwillingness to lie to others; maturity, which is equally hard to attain, consists of the unwillingness to lie to oneself.

Thomas Jefferson

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

Sigmund Freud

Even if all parts of a problem seem to fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, one has to remember that the probable need not necessarily be the truth and the truth not always probable.

Sigmund Freud

I no longer count as one of my merits that I always tell the truth as much as possible; it has become my metier.

Neil Gaiman

It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.

John Tillotson

Truth is the shortest and nearest way to our end, carrying us thither in a straight line.

John Tillotson

Truth is always consistent with itself, and needs nothing to help it out. It is always near at hand, and sits upon our lips, and is ready to drop out before we are aware; whereas a lie is troublesome, and sets a man's invention upon the rack; and one trick needs a great many more to make it good.

John Stuart Blackie

All things to all men only fools will tell, Truth profits none but those that use it well.