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It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
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
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Question
Ants
Focus
Timing
Action
Priorities
Enough
Manage
Time
Management
Focused
Prioritization
Busy
Punctuality
Inspiring
Fog
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
There is no ill which may not be dissipated, like the dark, if you let in a stronger light upon it.
Henry David Thoreau
Do what you love. Know your own bone gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.
Henry David Thoreau
My actual life is a fact, in view of which I have no occasion to congratulate myself but for my faith and aspiration I have respect. It is from these that I speak.
Henry David Thoreau
Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towardsrecognizing and organizing the rights of man?
Henry David Thoreau
The sea, vast and wild as it is, bears thus the waste and wrecks of human art to its remotest shore. There is no telling what it may not vomit up.
Henry David Thoreau
Sincerity is a great but rare virtue, and we pardon to it much complaining, and the betrayal of many weaknesses.
Henry David Thoreau
We discover a new world every time we see the earth again after it has been covered for a season with snow.
Henry David Thoreau
I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.
Henry David Thoreau
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
Henry David Thoreau
One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living.
Henry David Thoreau
Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man.
Henry David Thoreau
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
Henry David Thoreau
If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.
Henry David Thoreau
We seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of sheep-pasturage before it is habitable by man.
Henry David Thoreau
I know of no redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved I fall back on to this ground.
Henry David Thoreau
The student may read Homer or Ãâ schylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that hein some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages.
Henry David Thoreau
I am not afraid of praise, for I have practiced it on myself.
Henry David Thoreau
The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the lawmaker.
Henry David Thoreau
We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always.
Henry David Thoreau
It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.
Henry David Thoreau
