Henry David Thoreau Quotations: MORALS & VALUES
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
We are constantly invited to be what we are; as to something worthy and noble. I never waited but for myself to come round; none ever detained me, but I lagged or tagged after myself.—Journal, 2 February 1841
We are independent of the change we detect.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
We inspire friendship in men when we have contracted friendship with the gods.—Journal, June 1850
We might so simplify the rules of moral philosophy, as well as of arithmetic, that one formula would express them both. All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of the words by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
We need pray for no higher heaven than the pure senses can furnish, a purely sensuous life. Our present senses are but the rudiments of what they are destined to become. We are comparatively deaf and dumb and blind, and without smell or taste or feeling.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
We occasionally meet an individual of a character and disposition so entirely the reverse of our own that we wonder if he can indeed be another man like ourselves. We doubt if we ever could draw any nearer to him, and understand him.—Journal, 7 May 1838
We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.—WaldenÂ
We, too, are out, obeying the same law with all nature. Not less important are the observers of the birds than the birds themselves.—Journal, 20 March 1858
