Best 6 quotes in «walden quotes» category

Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other.We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that musty old cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post office, and at the sociable, and at the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another.

In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference.

It is life near the bone where it is sweetest.

No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety commonly to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience. [...] I sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this,--Who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it [...] for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected.

What I have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics. ... Such a rule ... draws lines through the length and breadth of the aggregate of a man's particular daily behaviors ... where they intersect will be the height or depth of his character.

I can only be nice to one Person, today's not your day tomorrow doesn't look good either.