Henry David Thoreau Quotes About Waiting

• The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Witty, Travel, Work

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.52, Xist Publishing

• What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes by them.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Regret, Men, Evil

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Civil Disobedience and Other Essays”, p.5, Courier Corporation

• They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy evil, that they may no longer have have it to regret.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Regret, Evil, Waiting

• Prominent and influential editors, accustomed to deal with politicians, men of an infinitely lower grade, say, in their ignorance,that he acted "on the principle of revenge." They do not know the man. They must enlarge themselves to conceive of him.... They have got to conceive of a man of faith and of religious principle, and not a politician or an Indian; of a man who did not wait till he was personally interfered with or thwarted in some harmless business before he gave his life to the cause of the oppressed.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Religious, Revenge, Ignorance

  Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.47, David M Gross

• I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came?--till you and I came over to him?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Bravery, Waiting

  "A Plea for Captain John Brown" (1859)

• Do what you know you ought to do. Why should we ever go abroad, even across the way, to ask a neighbor's advice? There is a nearerneighbor within us incessantly telling us how we should behave. But we wait for the neighbor without to tell us of some false, easier way.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Waiting, Advice, Way

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1786, Delphi Classics

• Be assured that every man's success is in proportion to his average ability. The meadow flowers spring and bloom where the watersannually deposit their slime, not where they reach in some freshet only. A man is not his hope, nor his despair, nor yet his past deed. We know not yet what we have done, still less what we are doing. Wait till evening, and other parts of our day's work will shine than we had thought at noon, and we shall discover the real purport of our toil. As when the farmer has reached the end of the furrow and looks back, he can tell best where the pressed earth shines most.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Success, Patience, Spring

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers (Annotated Edition)”, p.106, Jazzybee Verlag

• No doubt Carlyle has a propensity to exaggerate the heroic in history, that is, he creates you an ideal hero rather than another thing.... Yet what were history if he did not exaggerate it? How comes it that history never has to wait for facts, but for a man to write it? The ages may go on forgetting the facts never so long, he can remember two for every one forgotten. The musty records of history, like the catacombs, contain the perishable remains, but only in the breast of genius are embalmed the souls of heroes.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Hero, Writing, Men

• I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both inperson and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait until they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Thinking, Support

  Civil Disobedience (1849) See Coolidge 2; Douglass 7; Andrew Jackson 7; John Knox 1; Wendell Phillips 3

• Life is so short that it is not wise to take roundabout ways, nor can we spend much time in waiting.... We have not got half-way to dawn yet.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Wise, Waiting

  Henry David Thoreau (1974). “The correspondence of Henry David Thoreau”, Greenwood Pub Group

• At present the globe goes with a shattered constitution in its orbit.... No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise; as the laws of man's own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to health and happiness.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Health, Simple, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Selected Essays of Henry David Thoreau”, p.28, Simon and Schuster

• In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and winter before any thought will subside; we are sensible that behind the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain, and the bare clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which we occupy.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Summer, Sunset, Autumn

• He who walks alone, waits for no-one.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Waiting, Walks

• We are independent of the change we detect. The longer the lever, the less perceptible its motion. It is the slowest pulsation which is the most vital. The hero then will know how to wait, as well as to make haste. All good abides with him who waiteth wisely; we shall sooner overtake the dawn by remaining here than by hurrying over the hills of the west.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Change, Patience, Hero

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.532, Simon and Schuster

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