Henry David Thoreau Man Quotations

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? 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 he hears, however measured and far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music in which he hears, however measured, or far away.

Pity the man who has a character to support --it is worse than a large family -- he is silent poor indeed.

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

We falsely attribute to men a determined character -- putting together all their yesterdays -- and averaging them -- we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support -- it is worse than a large family -- he is the silent poor indeed.

I should be pleased to meet man in the woods. I wish he were to be encountered like wild caribous and moose.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Public opinion is a weak tyrant, compared with our private opinion - what a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates his fate

This American government -- what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will.

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. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

No man has ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his cloths; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioning ability of man to evaluate his life by a conscious endeavor

The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man confronts a fact

Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth? They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics.

A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it, than by the woods and swamps that surround it.

That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

I came into this world, not cheifly to make this a good place to live in, but live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he can not do everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks.

There was something refreshingly and wildly musical to my ears in the very name of the white man's canoe, reminding me of Charlevoix and Canadian Voyageurs. The batteau is a sort of mongrel between the canoe and the boat, a fur-trader's boat.

A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,--the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man's treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so.

How many fine thoughts has every man had! How few fine thoughts are expressed!

The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky.

Every man is entitled to come to Cattle-Show, even a transcendentalist; and for my part I am more interested in the men than in the cattle.

It is the man determines what is said, not the words.

To a small man every greater is an exaggeration.

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.

We are ashamed of our fear; for we know that a righteous man would not suspect danger nor incur any. Wherever a man feels fear, there is an avenger.

I have heard a good many pretend that they are going to die; or that they have died, for aught that I know. Nonsense! I'll defy them to do it. They have n't got life enough in them.... Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began.

The artist and his work are not to be separated. The most willfully foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly, but the deed and the doer together make ever one sober fact.