Henry David Thoreau Quotes

The sons of Adam are formed from dust; if not humble as the dust, they fall short of being men.

I'm not a god - I do bad things.

I'm no superman.

To boast of a performance which I cannot beat is merely stupid vanity. And if I can beat it that means there is nothing special about it. What has passed is already finished with. What I find more interesting is what is still to come.

I'm only a human being.

I think it's important to realize that we're all just human. I mean, nobody is supernatural.

Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man.

On the most exalted throne in the world, we are still seated on nothing but our arse.

And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered.

I'm not invincible.

See all the women seated, youth in their face lifts, old age in their hands.

I keep thinking how young can you die from old age

When a woman's face is wrinkled And her hairs are sprinkled, With gray, Lackaday! Aside she's cast, No one respect will pay; Remember, Lasses, remember. And while the sun shines make hay: You must not expect in December, The flowers you gathered in May.

Vanity is really the least bad and most pardonable sort. The vain person wants praise, applause, admiration too much and is always angling for it. It is a fault, but a childlike and even (in an odd way) a humble fault. It shows that you are not yet completely contented with your own admiration. You value other people enough to want them to look at you. You are in fact still human.

When Michelangelo was an old man, he drew himself sitting in a child's pushcart.

Younger people tend to associate happiness more with excitement and the future, while older people tend to associate happiness with peacefulness in the present.

Remember the root word of humble and human is the same: humus: earth. We are dust. We are created; it is God who made us and not we ourselves. But we were made to be co-creators with our maker.

It would be a good thing if young people were wise and old people were strong, but God has arranged things better.

Only human, after all.

I am only human, although I regret it.

The human condition is imperfection. And that's how it's supposed to be.

What's to come is still unsure: In delay there lies no plenty; Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth's a stuff will not endure.

Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a great deity. More humble and I believe true to consider him created from animals.

We all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.

There is something within our biological structure that screams out and says it is morally wrong for the old to outlive the young. This is one of the times when God doesn’t seem to make sense. This is the worst that life gets.