“A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit until we have so conducted that we feel like new men in the old.”

Henry David Thoreau

Explore This Quote Further

Quote by Henry David Thoreau: “A man who has at length found something to do wi… - Image 1

Similar quotes

“Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted or enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.”


“All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.”


“Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.”


“Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends.”


“I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.”


“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 old musty cheese that we are.”