Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Luck

• Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Luck, Literature

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.24, Courier Corporation

• The natural historian is not a fisherman who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely; but as fishing has been styled "a contemplative man's recreation," introducing him profitably to woods and water, so the fruit of the naturalist's observations is not in new genera or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is only a more contemplative man's recreation.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Good Luck, Men, Fishing

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.459, Simon and Schuster

• A person who chooses to die or to risk death demonstrates that there are values, principles, maxims, that are more valuable to him than is life itself. In short, he places his immortal self above his mortal self. Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Writing, Self, Risk

• That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society! And that is called enterprise! I know of no more startling development of the immorality of trade, and all the common modes of getting a living.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Mean, Luck, Development

  Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.172, David M Gross

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