Henry David Thoreau Quotes

For years we have been giving their political leadership the benefit of the doubt, and now only doubt remains.

We are deceived by promises and time disappoints us.

It's a terrible thing to go through life thinking that you have a rock on your side when you haven't.

Hope is a pleasant acquaintance, but an unsafe friend.

Nothing keeps its promise.

What's important is promising something to the people, not actually keeping those promises. The people have always lived on hope alone.

America is like an unfaithful love who promises us more than we got.

Promising is not giving, but serves to content fools.

The saloon is a liar. It promises good cheer and sends sorrow

From my own kind I only learn How foolish comfort is

Drink promises you everything, but gives nothing.

Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun.

Never give us what we really want. Cut the dream into pieces and scatter them like ashes. Dole out the empty promises. Package our aspirations and sell them to us, cheaply made enough to fall apart.

As the weeks and months unfolded, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise.

It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise the future can never keep.

The world is hollow. It's a lot to take in. Like cracking an egg and finding nothing inside. Or a full grown elephant.

It was hollow, my triumph, I could feel that, but I held on to it just the same.

When you get there, there isn't any there there.

Success can also cause misery. The trick is not to be surprised when you discover it doesn't bring you all the happiness and answers you thought it would.

She felt a stealing sense of fatigue as she walked; the sparkle had died out of her, and the taste of life was stale on her lips. She hardly knew what she had been seeking, or why the failure to find it had so blotted the light from her sky: she was only aware of a vague sense of failure, of an inner isolation deeper than the loneliness about her.

Misanthropy ariseth from a man trusting another without having sufficient knowledge of his character, and, thinking him to be truthful, sincere, and honourable, finds a little afterwards that he is wicked, faithless, and then he meets with another of the same character. When a man experiences this often, and more particularly from those whom he considered his most dear and best friends, at last, having frequently made a slip, he hates the whole world, and thinks that there is nothing sound at all in any of them.

The world hath failed to impart the joy our youth forebodes; failed to fill up the void which in our breasts we bear.

Perhaps you considered yourself an oracle, Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other. Thirty years now I have labored To dredge the silt from your throat. I am none the wiser.

The crowd, having been promised nothing, felt cheated, having received nothing.