Henry David Thoreau Quotes

It is an aspect of all happiness to suppose that we deserve it.

People who are in a fortunate position always attribute virtue to what makes them so happy.

I'm not no egotistical person. I just want what I'm supposed to get. Not a penny more, not a penny less.

I know nothing and perhaps I never will.

Many new years you may see, but happy ones you cannot see without deserving them. These virtue, honor, and knowledge alone can merit, alone can produce.

I don't know anything and neither do you.

'I don't know' is my favorite position.

The very idea that you can pursue happiness, that you can deserve it, that you can demand it, that you have the right to be happy, is foolish. Nobody has the right to be happy. You can be happy, but there is nothing like a right about it. And if you think that it is your right you will go on missing, because you have started to look in the wrong direction from the very beginning.

The only thing I know for sure is how much I do not know.

And any man who knows a thing, knows he knows not a damn, damn thing at all.

There is a proud modesty in merit.

Deserve a great deal, and you shall have a great deal; deserve little, and you shall have but a little; and be good for nothing atall, and I assure you, you shall have nothing at all.

It's not the parts of the Bible I don't know that worries me...it's the parts that I do.

If you have the least doubt about it, do not marry.

Conscious virtue is the only solid foundation of all happiness; for riches, power, rank, or whatever, in the common acceptation ofthe word, is supposed to constitute happiness, will never quiet, much less cure, the inward pangs of guilt.

I do suspect that he is not really necessary to my happiness.

Do you know, Gilbert, there are times when I strongly suspect that I love you!

For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead Kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.

Guilt, though it may attain temporal splendor, can never confer real happiness; the evil consequences of our crimes long survive their commission, and, like the ghosts of the murdered, forever haunt the steps of the malefactor; while the paths of virtue, though seldom those of worldly greatness, are always those of pleasantness and peace.

there is only one thing we do know and that is that we do not know anything.

I do not know what to do, my mind's in two.

I knew what I did and I knew how I did it, but I didn't know why.

I know enough now to know I know nothing.

Worthy things happen to the worthy.

The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.