Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.
Henry David Thoreau
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Attention
Improved
Means
Toys
Ends
Invention
Mean
Madness
Things
Serious
Unimproved
Technology
Wont
Pretty
Distract
Literature
Inventions
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
In 1848, Thoreau went to jail for refusing, as a protest against the Mexican war, to pay his poll tax. When RW Emerson came to bail him out, Emerson said, 'Henry, what are you doing in there?' Thoreau quietly replied, 'Ralph, what are you doing out there?'
Henry David Thoreau
The birds I heard today, which, fortunately, did not come within the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creation.
Henry David Thoreau
How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.
Henry David Thoreau
The most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively,as if the speaker had a right to know what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been well learned.
Henry David Thoreau
If I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.
Henry David Thoreau
Resign yourself to the influence of the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.
Henry David Thoreau
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
Henry David Thoreau
So near along life's stream are the fountains of innocence and youth making fertile its sandy margin and the voyageur will do well to replenish his vessels often at these uncontaminated sources.
Henry David Thoreau
Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of.
Henry David Thoreau
The past is only so heroic as we see it. It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field.
Henry David Thoreau
No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.
Henry David Thoreau
Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.
Henry David Thoreau
Our own country furnishes antiquities as ancient and durable, and as useful, as any rocks at least as well covered with lichens,and a soil which, if it is virgin, is but virgin mould, the very dust of nature. What if we cannot read Rome or Greece, Etruria or Carthage, or Egypt or Babylon, on these are our cliffs bare?
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
Every man is entitled to come to Cattle-Show, even a transcendentalist and for my part I am more interested in the men than in the cattle.
Henry David Thoreau
You cannot hear music and noise at the same time.
Henry David Thoreau
The startings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day.
Henry David Thoreau
There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.
Henry David Thoreau
Even Nature is observed to have her playful moods or aspects, of which man sometimes seems to be the sport.
Henry David Thoreau
