Walden Quotes

“Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still. There was never yet such a storm but it was Æolian music to a healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“My excuse for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it; that is a penalty which reformed tobacco chewers have to pay; though there are things enough I have chewed, which I could lecture against. If you should ever be betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not let your left hand know what your right hand does , for it is not worth knowing. Rescue the drowning and tie your shoe-strings. Take your time, and set about some free labor.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit until we have so conducted that we feel like new men in the old.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less?”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“We are a race of tit-men...”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do...How vigilant we are! determined not live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“Any man will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of; and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and classbooks, and when we leave school, the Little Reading, and story books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“Die Einfachheit und Nacktheit des primitiven Menschen hatte wenigstens den Vorteil, daß er sich in der Natur als Gast fühlte. War er durch Nahrung und Schlaf erquickt, dann dachte er wieder ans Weiterziehen. Er lebte in der Welt gleichsam wie in einem Zelt, durchstreifte die Täler, überquerte die Ebenen oder kletterte auf Berge. Aber die Menschen haben sich zu Werkzeugen ihrer Werkzeuge gemacht! Der Mensch, der sich frei und unabhängig Beeren pflückte, wenn er hungrig war, ist Farmer geworden, und der einst unter einem Baum Schutz suchte, Hausbesitzer. Wir schlagen nicht mehr für eine Nacht unser Zelt auf, sondern haben uns auf der Erde ansässig gemacht und den Himmel vergessen. Wir haben die christliche Kultur angenommen, doch nur als verbesserte Methode der Agri-Kultur. Wir haben für diese Welt ein Familienhaus und für die andere ein Familiengrab errichtet.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“We commonly do not remember that it is … always the first person that is speaking.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“There is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes a-foot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles, the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day’s wage. I remember when wages were sixty cents a-day for labourers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the meanwhile have earned your fare, and arrive there some time to-morrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial. It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods

“Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“Thu luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows that surround it. We need the tonic of wildness...”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what—how—when—where? But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips. I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“I was determined to know beans. When they were growing, I used to hoe from five o'clock in the morning till noon, and commonly spent the rest of the day about other affairs. Consider the intimate and curious acquaintance one makes with various kinds of weeds—it will bear some iteration in the account, for there was no little iteration in the labor—disturbing their delicate organizations so ruthlessly, and making such invidious distinctions with his hoe, levelling whole ranks of one species, and sedulously cultivating another. That's Roman wormwood—that's pigweed—that's sorrel—that's piper-grass—have at him, chop him up, turn his roots upward to the sun, don't let him have a fibre in the shade, if you do he'll turn himself t' other side up and be as green as a leek in two days. A long war, not with cranes, but with weeds, those Trojans who had sun and rain and dews on their side. Daily the beans saw me come to their rescue armed with a hoe, and thin the ranks of their enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead. Many a lusty crest—waving Hector, that towered a whole foot above his crowding comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“One chair for solitude, two for friendship, and three for society.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read the.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes that slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within.... After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries again what noble life it can make... The Vedas say, "All intelligences awake with the morning." All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“Người ta hỏi một nhà thông thái rằng, trong số nhiều cây nổi tiếng mà Chúa toàn năng đã tạo thành những cây cao bóng cả, không có cây nào được gọi là azad, hay tự do, ngoài cây bách là cây không quả, có bí mật gì trong chuyện này không?
Nhà thông thái trả lời, mỗi cây có một sản phẩm thích hợp và có mùa thích hợp với nó, đúng mùa thì nó tươi tốt và ra hoa, trái mùa thì nó khô vàng và héo tàn, cây bách không ở trong hai trạng thái này, vì nó lúc nào cũng xanh tươi, và bản chất của nó là azad, hay tự do tín ngưỡng.
Đừng gắn trái tim bạn với cái gì nhất thời; vì con sông Dijlah, hay Tigris, sẽ tiếp tục chảy qua Bagdad sau khi nòi giống các vua Hồi đã tuyệt diệt; nếu bạn giàu có, hãy hào phóng; nhưng nếu không có gì để cho, hãy là 1 azad, hay 1 người tự do, giống như cây bách.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden