"A noble person confers no such gift..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau
A noble person confers no such gift as his whole confidence: none so exalts the giver and the receiver; it produces the truest gratitude. Perhaps it is only essential to friendship that some vital trust should have been reposed by the one in the other. I feel addressed and probed even to the remotest parts of my being when one nobly shows, even in trivial things, an implicit faith in me.... A threat or a curse may be forgotten, but this mild trust translates me.
More by Henry David Thoreau
“There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.”
“The researcher is more memorable than the researched.”
“Ice is an interesting subject for contemplation. They told me that they had some in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is the difference between the affections and the intellect.”
More on Trust
“Only be admonished by what you already see, not to strike leagues of friendship with cheap persons, where no friendship can be. Our impatience betrays us into rash and foolish alliances which no God attends.”
“Why should I hasten to solve every riddle which life offers me? I am well assured that the Questioner, who brings me so many problems, will bring me the answers also, in due time.”
“Trust in the person's promise who dares to refuse what they fear they cannot perform.”
More on Friendship
“She discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.”
“All of my walls are covered with framed pictures of my friends.”
“Your notions of friendship are new to me; I believe every man is born with his quantum, and he cannot give to one without robbing another. I very well know to whom I would give the first place in my friendship, but they are not in the way, I am condemned to another scene, and therefore I distribute it in pennyworths to those about me, and who displease me least, and should do the same to my fellow prisoners if I were condemned to a jail.”