Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters? Henry David Thoreau More Quotes by Henry David Thoreau More Quotes From Henry David Thoreau Expect no trivial truth from me, unless I am on the witness- stand. I will come as near to lying as you can drive a coach and four. Henry David Thoreau truth law lying There is none who does not lie hourly in the respect he pays to false appearance. Henry David Thoreau respect truth lying How sweet it would be to treat men and things, for an hour, for just what they are! Henry David Thoreau truth sweet integrity You speak of poverty and dependence. Who are poor and dependent? Who are rich and independent? When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality? Henry David Thoreau independent truth reality It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad; his life may be true, or it may be false; it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up; the bad man destroys himself. Henry David Thoreau truth evil men What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and sublimest truth? Henry David Thoreau truth character men That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but superficial, it was!--only another kind of politics or dancing. Men were making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stood on truth. They were merely banded together, as usual one leaning on another, and all together on nothing. Henry David Thoreau truth education country Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written. Henry David Thoreau flower truth animal All expression of truth does at length take this deep ethical form. Henry David Thoreau truth expression doe Whoever can discern truth has received his commission from a higher source than the chiefest justice in the world who can discernonly law. He finds himself constituted judge of the judge. Strange that it should be necessary to state such simple truths! Henry David Thoreau simple truth law You have but little more to do than throw up your cap for entertainment these American days.... Farmers' sons will stare by the hour to see a juggler draw ribbons from his throat, though he tells them it is all deception. Surely, men love darkness rather than light. Henry David Thoreau truth men son He who cannot exaggerate is not qualified to utter truth. Henry David Thoreau exaggeration qualified truth Exaggeration! was ever any virtue attributed to a man without exaggeration? was ever any vice, without infinite exaggeration? Do we not exaggerate ourselves to ourselves, or do we recognize ourselves for the actual men we are? Are we not all great men? Yet what are we actually, to speak of? We live by exaggeration. Henry David Thoreau vices truth men Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom everywhere. Henry David Thoreau deception truth play If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends! Henry David Thoreau truth men science The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among Englishmen and Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent,--others merely sensible, as the phrase is,--others prophetic. Henry David Thoreau truth dream men The Oriental philosophy approaches easily loftier themes than the modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense. Henry David Thoreau philosophical justice philosophy It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downward to the sea. Henry David Thoreau philosophical spring philosophy Any moral philosophy is exceedingly rare. This of Menu addresses our privacy more than most. It is a more private and familiar, and at the same time, a more public and universal word, than is spoken in parlor or pulpit nowadays. Henry David Thoreau addresses philosophical philosophy Slow are the beginnings of philosophy. Henry David Thoreau philosophical philosophy
