Henry David Thoreau Quotations: HUMANKIND
There has been no man of pure Genius; as there has been none wholly destitute of Genius.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i.e. to be significant, must be subjective.—Journal, 6 May 1854
They who are ready to go are already invited.—Journal, 2 July 1840
This life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any account men give of it.—Thoreau to Mrs. Cynthia (Dunbar) Thoreau, 6 August 1843
Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.—Walden
To live in relations of truth and sincerity with men is to dwell in a frontier country.—Journal, 12 January 1852
To the thinker, all institutions of men, as all imperfection, viewed from the point of equanimity, are legitimate subjects of humor.—"Thomas Carlyle and His Works"
Treat your friends for what you know them to be—regard no surfaces. Consider not what they did, but what they intended.—Journal, 31 December 1851
Virtue is incalculable, as it is inestimable. Well, man's destiny is but virtue, or manhood. It is wholly moral, to be learned only by the life of the soul.—Journal, 3 April 1842
Virtue is the deed of the bravest art which demands the greatest confidence and fearlessness. Only some hardy soul ventures upon it. Virtue is a bravery so hardy that it deals in what it has no experience in.—Journal, 1 January 1842
