Quotations from Thoreau

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Quotations from Thoreau

• More Tastes of Transcendentalism

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I went to the wood because I wished to live
deliberately, to front only essentially facts of
life, and see if I could not learn what it had to
teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that
I had not lived.
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• There is no remedy for love but to love more.

4

• Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance
  the general sweetness of the atmosphere.

5

• Be true to
• your work,
• your word,
• and your friend

6

• Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.
  Do not trouble yourself to get new things,
  whether clothes or friends. Things do not change,
  we change. Sell your clothes and keep your
  thoughts. God will see that you do want society.

7

• Be not simply good be good for something.

8
If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different
drummer. Let him step to the music which hears,
however measured or far away.
9
For an impenetrable shield, stand inside
yourself.
10
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
11
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but
follows religiously the new.
12
In the long run men hit only what they aim at.
Therefore, though they shall fail immediately,
they had better aim at something high.
13
Knowledge does not come to us be details, but in
flashes of light from heaven.
14
I do not know how to distinguish between our
waking life and a dream. Are we not always
living the life the life that we imaginewe are?
15
The use of the rainbow who has described it?
16
. . . A man is rich in proportion to the
number of things he can afford to let alone.
17
All wisdom is the reward of a discipline,
conscious or unconscious.
18
What does education often do? It makes a
straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
19
What is religion? That which is never spoken.
20
Say what you have to say, not what you ought.
Any truth is better than make-believe.
21
Truth is always paradoxical.
22
I must live above all in the present.
23
Nothing stands up more free from blame in the
world than a pine tree.
24
There is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance
which the arches of science can never span.
25
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all
to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
26
When I hear a robin sing at sunset, I cannot
help contrast the magnanimity of nature with the
bustle and impatience of man.
27
Could a greater miracle take place than for us
to look through each other's eyes for an
instant?  
28
A man sits as many risks as he runs.
29
As to conforming outwardly, and living your own
life inwardly, I have not a very high opinion of
that course.
30
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.
Live the life you have imagined.
31
How often we find ourselves turning our backs on
our actual friends.
32
Goodness is the only investment that never
fails.
33
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and
the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
34
Good for the body is the work of the body, good
for the soul is the work of the soul, and good
for either is the work of the other.
35
Glances of true beauty can be seen in the faces
of those who live in true meekness.
36
Distrust any enterprise that requires new
clothes.
37
Haste makes waste, no less in life than in
housekeeping.
38
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us
are tiny matters compared to what lives within
us.
39
Friendship is never established as an understood
relation. It is a miracle which requires constant
proofs. It is an exercise of the purest
imagination and of the rarest faith.
40
Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
41
It takes two to speak truth one to speak and
another to hear.
42
I have learned, that if one advances confidently
in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to
live the life he has imagined, he will meet with
a success unexpected in common hours.
43
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to
have friends at a distance they make the
latitudes and longitudes.