Famous Quotes & Sayings

Henry David Thoreau

It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad; his life may be true, or it may be false; it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up; the bad man destroys himself.

Henry David Thoreau

You speak of poverty and dependence. Who are poor and dependent? Who are rich and independent? When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality?

Henry David Thoreau

Expect no trivial truth from me, unless I am on the witness- stand. I will come as near to lying as you can drive a coach and four.

Henry David Thoreau

It is not enough that we are truthful; we must cherish and carry out high purposes to be truthful about.

Henry David Thoreau

No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation.

Henry David Thoreau

When we come down into the distant village, visible from the mountain-top, the nobler inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed, and left only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination of poets which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of their heroes.

Henry David Thoreau

Fame itself is but an epitaph; as late, as false, as true.

Henry David Thoreau

Your scheme must be the framework of the universe; all other schemes will soon be ruins.

Henry David Thoreau

Stuff a cold and starve a cold are but two ways. They are the two practices, both always in full blast. Yet you must take the advice of the one school as if there was no other.

Henry David Thoreau

This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest posterity, content with slightly and religiously retouchingthe old material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity.

Henry David Thoreau

As for the tenets of the Brahmans, we are not so much concerned to know what doctrines they held, as that they were held by any. We can tolerate all philosophies.... It is the attitude of these men, more than any communication which they make, that attracts us.

Henry David Thoreau

Here or nowhere is our heaven.

Henry David Thoreau

There are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically opposite.

Henry David Thoreau

Only lovers know the value and magnanimity of truth.

Henry David Thoreau

If there is nothing new on the earth, still the traveler always has a resource in the skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types on this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new truth there.

Henry David Thoreau

Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness the polisher of his sentences. He could afford to lose his Sharp's rifles, while he retained his faculty of speech,--a Sharp's rifle of infinitely surer and longer range.

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

Exaggerated history is poetry, and truth referred to a new standard.

Henry David Thoreau

You may rely on it that you have the best of me in my books, and that I am not worth seeing personally, the stuttering, blunderingclod-hopper that I am. Even poetry, you know, is in one sense an infinite brag and exaggeration. Not that I do not stand on all that I have written,--but what am I to the truth I feebly utter?

Henry David Thoreau

A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.

Henry David Thoreau

The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.

Henry David Thoreau

Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.

Henry David Thoreau

Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Henry David Thoreau

If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Henry David Thoreau

If we dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak truth.

Henry David Thoreau

As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole life.

Henry David Thoreau

Where there is a lull in truth an institution springs up.

Henry David Thoreau

In all perception of the truth there is a divine ecstasy, an inexpressible delirium of joy, as when a youth embraces his betrothed virgin.

Henry David Thoreau

I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.

Henry David Thoreau

Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower into a truth.

Henry David Thoreau

Truth is always paradoxical.

Henry David Thoreau

Men are probably nearer the essential truth in their superstitions than in their science.

Henry David Thoreau

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.