Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Character
-
The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.
→ -
Every wild apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to man! So are human beings, referred to the highest standard, the celestial fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate; and only the most persistent and strongest genius defends itself and prevails, sends a tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers and statesmen thus spring up in the country pastures, and outlast the hosts of unoriginal men.
→ -
We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been times when our friends' thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be.
→ -
All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority.
→ -
I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching-thang to this effect: "Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again."
→ -
It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.
→ -
We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.
→ -
Have you not budged an inch, then? Such is the daily news. Its facts appear to float in the atmosphere.... We should wash ourselves clean of such news. Of what consequence, though our planet explode, if there is no character involved in the explosion? In health we have not the least curiosity about such events. We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up.
→ -
The more supple vagabond, too, is sure to appear on the least rumor of such a gathering, and the next day to disappear, and go into his hole like the seventeen-year locust, in an ever-shabby coat, though finer than the farmer's best, yet never dressed.... He especially is the creature of the occasion. He empties both his pockets and his character into the stream, and swims in such a day. He dearly loves the social slush. There is no reserve of soberness in him.
→ -
When a shadow flits across the landscape of the soul where is the substance?
→ -
Much of our poetry has the very best manners, but no character.
→ -
Show me a man who feels bitterly toward John Brown, and let me hear what noble verse he can repeat. He'll be as dumb as if his lips were stone.
→ -
The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever.
→ -
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
→ -
Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
→ -
Our vices always lie in the direction of our virtues, and in their best estate are but plausible imitations of the latter.
→ -
What stuff is the man made of who is not coexistent in our thought with the purest and sublimest truth?
→ -
We falsely attribute to men a determined character - putting together all their yesterdays - and averaging them - we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support - it is worse than a large family - he is the silent poor indeed.
→ -
White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.... They are too pure to have a market value;they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they! We never learned meanness of them.
→ -
The humblest observer who goes to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of the character of a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same thing with the wages of honest toil. But, practically, he forgets what he has seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle, and goes into trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly proves another lottery, where the fact is not so obvious.
→ -
If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the barroom and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed.
→ -
Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform.
→ -
Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
→ -
Your richest veins don't lie nearest the surface.
→ -
A true politeness does not result from any hasty and artificial polishing, it is true, but grows naturally in characters of the right grain and quality, through a long fronting of men and events, and rubbing on good and bad fortune.
→ -
We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.
→ -
In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others awake.
→ -
Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concretic layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society...may unexpectedly come forth...to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!...Such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn...Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
→ -
Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer's character, until we hesitate tolay them aside without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies.
→ -
Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
→
Related Authors
-
Mahatma Gandhi Civil rights leader -
Mark Twain Author -
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist -
John Muir Author -
Friedrich Nietzsche Philologist -
Louisa May Alcott Novelist -
Edgar Allan Poe Author -
Herman Melville Novelist -
Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil rights activist -
Christopher McCandless Adventurer -
Margaret Fuller Journalist -
Arthur Schopenhauer Philosopher -
Jean-Jacques Rousseau Philosopher -
Harriet Beecher Stowe Author -
Aldo Leopold Author -
Jack London Author -
Walt Whitman Poet -
Abraham Lincoln 16th U.S. President -
Leo Tolstoy Writer -
Nathaniel Hawthorne Novelist
Popular Topics
- One Tree Hill Memorable
- Perfect Fit
- Express Appreciation
- Ambulance
- Children Innocence
- Affordable Health Care
- Paid Off
- Summer Breeze
- Presence Of God
- Parks
- Democratic Elections
- Great Fashion
- Win At All Costs
- Bumps In The Road
- Time To Grow Up
- Arms
- Knowledge Learning
- Transfiguration
- Inspirational And Innovation
- St John Of The Cross