None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.
Henry David ThoreauTags: simplicity
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.
Henry David ThoreauTags: self-confidence
If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.
Henry David ThoreauCommonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.
Henry David ThoreauWe are a race of tit-men...
Henry David ThoreauIf a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or
an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer?
Tags: conformity maturity pace
Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.
Henry David ThoreauTags: simplicity materialism dependence
There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and mean.
Henry David ThoreauTags: religion emotion routine
I delight to come to my bearings,—not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may,—not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts me;—not hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less,—not suppose a case, but take the case that is
Henry David ThoreauTags: prayer simplicity timelessness
Every day or two I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs.
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