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
Literature
Inventions
Attention
Improved
Means
Toys
Ends
Invention
Mean
Madness
Things
Serious
Unimproved
Technology
Wont
Pretty
Distract
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
I do not believe there are eight hundred human beings on the globe.
Henry David Thoreau
To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
Henry David Thoreau
The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must bestripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living laid for a foundation.
Henry David Thoreau
How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my everyday business. I am as busy as a bee about it. I ramble over fields on that errand and am never so happy as when I feel myself heavy with honey and wax. I am like a bee searching the livelong day for the sweets of nature.
Henry David Thoreau
The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.
Henry David Thoreau
I love man-kind, but I hate the institutions of the dead unkind. Men execute nothing so faithfully as the wills of the dead, to the last codicil and letter. They rule this world, and the living are but their executors. Such foundation too have our lectures and our sermons, commonly.
Henry David Thoreau
It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning.
Henry David Thoreau
Undoubtedly, in the most brilliant successes, the first rank is always sacrificed.
Henry David Thoreau
The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly.
Henry David Thoreau
Morning glory is the best name, it always refreshes me to see it.
Henry David Thoreau
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance they make the latitudes and longitudes.
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
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
Henry David Thoreau
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.
Henry David Thoreau
Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses.
Henry David Thoreau
It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the restless class of Reformers. What if these grievances exist? So do you and I.
Henry David Thoreau
The higher the mountain on which you stand, the less change in the prospect from year to year, from age to age. Above a certain height there is no change.
Henry David Thoreau
The imagination, give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes.
Henry David Thoreau
Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.
Henry David Thoreau
There are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically opposite.
Henry David Thoreau
