Henry David Thoreau Quotations: THOUGHTS & OPINIONS
Others give their advice, he gives his sympathy also.—"Thomas Carlyle and His Works"
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicated, his fate.—Walden
Show me a man who consults his genius, and you have shown me a man who cannot be advised.—Journal, 27 December 1858
Some dreams are divine, as well as some waking thoughts.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Stuff a cold and starve a cold are but two ways. They are the two practices both always in full blast. Yet you must take advice of the one school as if there was no other.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack RiversÂ
Talk of mysteries!—Think of our life in nature,—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?—The Maine Woods
The entertaining a single thought of a certain elevation makes all men of one religion. It is always some base alloy that creates the distinction of sects.—Journal, 8 August 1852
The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.—"Walking"
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.—Walden
The New Testament is remarkable for its pure morality; the best of the Hindoo Scripture, for its pure intellectuality. The reader is nowhere raised into and sustained in a higher, purer, or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagvat-Geeta.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
