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Danh ngôn của Henry David Thoreau (Sứ mệnh: 9)

Be not simply good - be good for something.
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
Things do not change; we change.
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.
It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.
The bluebird carries the sky on his back.
Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
This world is but a canvas to our imagination.
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.
When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success.
There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.
We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
That government is best which governs least.
Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
Men are born to succeed, not to fail.
What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.
Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.
Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.
I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.
It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
The heart is forever inexperienced.
A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.
The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
If 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.
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
Live your life, do your work, then take your hat.
I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.
A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
The perception of beauty is a moral test.
In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.
Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.
Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Live the life you've dreamed.
'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes.
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.
True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?
It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.
Faith never makes a confession.
As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.
Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.
In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.
Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!
There are certain pursuits which, if not wholly poetic and true, do at least suggest a nobler and finer relation to nature than we know. The keeping of bees, for instance.
There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature.
There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.
There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.
Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.
All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.
No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.
Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.
Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.
Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.
It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.
Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.
They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.
The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.
I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.
The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?
There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.
If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.
Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed... Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.