Henry David Thoreau Quotations: Self
It is enough if I have pleased myself with writing—I am then sure of an audience.—Journal, 24 March 1842
It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are yourself the slave-driver.—Journal, 1845-47
Let me forever go in search of myself; never for a moment think that I have found myself; be a stranger to myself, never a familiar, seeking acquaintance still.—Journal, 16 July 1851
Let me say to you and to myself in one breath: Cultivate the tree which you have found to bear fruit in your soil. Regard not your past failures nor successes. All the past is equally a failure and a success; it is success in as much as it offers you the present opportunity.—Journal, after 16 July 1850
Man is the artificer of his own happiness.—Journal, 21 January 1838
Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i.e. we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.—Journal, 2 July 1857
May I be to myself as one is to me whom I love, a dear and cherished object.—Journal, 18 July 1851
Men should not go to New Zealand to write or think of Greece and Rome, nor more to New England. New earths, new themes expect us. Celebrate not the Garden of Eden, but your own.—Journal, 22 October 1857
My greatest skill has been to want but little.—Journal, 19 July 1851
Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.—Walden
