Henry David Thoreau Quotes on Mind (26 Quotes)

The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.

The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! 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.

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

How novel and original must be each new mans view of the universe for though the world is so old so many books have been written each object appears wholly undescribed to our experience each field of thought wholly unexplored The whole world is an America, a New World.

A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

The three-o'-clock in the morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest.

How can they expect a harvest of thought who have not had the seed time of character.

Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

I know myself as a human entity the scene, so to speak, or thoughts are affection and am sensible of certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is no part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.

The eye may see for the hand, but not for the mind.

Associate reverently, and as much as you can, with your loftiest thoughts.

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.

A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as this brain.

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution such call I good books.

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one. Mathematics should be mixed not only with physics but with ethics that is mixed mathematics. The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical.

How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought We all live according to rule. Some men are bedridden all world-ridden.

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

My facts shall be falsehoods to the common sense. I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic. Facts which the mind perceived, thoughts which the body thought with these I deal.

If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement of a bad invention.

Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.

Our thought are the epochs in our lives all else is but a journal of the winds that blew while we were here.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.