Henry David Thoreau Quotations: TIME
There is a certain glory attends on water by night. By it the heavens are related to the earth—Undistinguishable from a sky beneath you.—Journal, 13 June 1851
This is one of those dateless benefits conferred on man, which have no record in our vulgar day, though we still find some similitude to them in our dreams, in which we have a more liberal and juster apprehension of things, unconstrained by habit, which is then in some measure put off, and divested of memory, which we call history.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into any modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript.—Walden
Thus a man shall lead his life away from here on the edge of the wilderness, in Indian Millinocket stream, in a new world, far in the dark of a continent, and have a flute to play at evening here, while his strains echo to the stars, amid the howling of wolves; shall live, as it were, in the primitive age of the world, a primitive man.—The Maine Woods
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one.—Walden
Time hides no treasures. We want not its then, but its now.—Journal, 9 August 1841
To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history and biography.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Waves of serener life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather. In some happier moment, when more sap flows in the withered stalk of our life, Syria and India stretch away from our present as they do in history. All the events which make the annals of the nations are but the shadows of our private experiences.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
We are inclined to think of all Romans who lived within five hundred years B.C. as contemporaries to each other. Yet Time moved at the same deliberate pace then as now.—Journal, 8 December 1859
We falsely attribute to men a determined character; putting together all their yesterdays and averaging them, we presume we know them.—Journal, 28 April 1841
