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Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
Henry David Thoreau
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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
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Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Better
Destroy
Conservation
Every
Creatures
Understands
Men
Dead
Preserve
Tree
Preserves
Life
Environment
Creature
Aright
Alive
Forests
Moose
Rather
Trees
Pine
Inspirational
Environmental
Ecology
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.
Henry David Thoreau
Pray, for what do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuviæ at last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave this to be burned?
Henry David Thoreau
The husbandman is always a better Greek than the scholar is prepared to appreciate, and the old custom still survives, while antiquarians and scholars grow gray in commemorating it.
Henry David Thoreau
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?
Henry David Thoreau
The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunneled under the whole breadth of the land.
Henry David Thoreau
A traveler who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.
Henry David Thoreau
It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad his life may be true, or it may be false it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up the bad man destroys himself.
Henry David Thoreau
From exertion come wisdom and purity from sloth ignorance and sensuality.
Henry David Thoreau
So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old.
Henry David Thoreau
When my legs begin to move, the thoughts begin to flow.
Henry David Thoreau
What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado is anywhere but where he lives.
Henry David Thoreau
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Henry David Thoreau
I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Henry David Thoreau
I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.
Henry David Thoreau
When a shadow flits across the landscape of the soul where is the substance?
Henry David Thoreau
If ever I did a man any goodof course it was something exceptional and insignificant compared with the good or evil which I am constantly doing by being what I am.
Henry David Thoreau
When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another.
Henry David Thoreau
Where is the unexplored land but in our own untried enterprises? To an adventurous spirit any place--London, New York, Worcester, or his own yard--is unexplored land, to seek which Frémont and Kane travel so far. To a sluggish and defeated spirit even the Great Basin and the Polaris are trivial places.
Henry David Thoreau
When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis.
Henry David Thoreau
In the wilderness is the salvation of the world.
Henry David Thoreau
