Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Friendship
How is it that we are impelled to treat our old friends so ill when we obtain new ones?—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
I am glad to hear that any words of mine, though spoken so long ago that I can hardly claim identity with their author, have reached you. It gives me pleasure, because I have therefore reason to suppose that I have uttered what concerns men, and that it is not in vain that man speaks to man. This is the value of literature.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 27 March 1848
I catch an echo of the great strain of Friendship played somewhere, and feel compensated for months and years of commonplace.—Journal, 13 July 1857
I had another friend, who, through a slight obtuseness, perchance, did not recognize a fact which the dignity of friendship would by no means allow me to descend so far as to speak of, and yet the inevitable effect of that ignorance was to hold us apart forever.—Journal, 4 March 1856
I had two friends. The one offered me friendship on such terms that I could not accept it, without a sense of degradation.—Journal, 4 March 1856
I hate that my motive for visiting a friend should be that I want society; that it should lie in my poverty and weakness, and not in his and my riches and strength.—Journal, 14 February 1852
I have just got a letter from Ricketson, urging me to come to New Bedford, which possibly I may do. He says I can wear my old clothes there.—Thoreau to H.G.O. Blake, 26 September 1855
I have never met with a friend who furnished me sea-room. I have only tacked a few times and come to anchor—not sailed—made no voyage, carried no venture.—Journal, 24 August 1852
I have some good friends from whom I am wont to part with disappointment for they neither care what I think nor mind what I say.—Journal, 27 January 1854
I love men with the same distinctions that I love women—as if my friend were of some third sex—some other or stranger and still my friend.—Journal, 5 May 1846
