284 quotes
I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha, or Christ, or Swedenborg, who are without the pale of their churches.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever glorious morning? I do not make an exorbitant demand, surely.
Life Without Principle (1863)
Aeschylus had a clear eye for the commonest things. His genius was only an enlarged common sense.
Journals (1838)
A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.
Civil Disobedience (1849)
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
He would have left a Greek accent slanting the wrong way, and righted up a falling man.
A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)
We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The hands only serve the eyes.
Journals (1838)
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? — If you cannot tolerate the planet that it is on?
Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.
Walking (1862)
The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.
This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge... It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature.
Journals (1838)
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.
Walden (1854)
If a man walk 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 whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
Life Without Principle (1863)
The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer. I am surprised, as well as delighted, when this happens, it is such a rare use he would make of me, as if he were acquainted with the tool.
Life Without Principle (1863)
A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.
Civil Disobedience (1849)
What are the earth and all its interests beside the deep surmise which pierces and scatters them?
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
Most books belong to the house and streets only, and in the fields their leaves feel very thin.
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.
Walking (1862)