Quote

I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.

Henry David Thoreau

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Foundation
Stand
Doubt
Least
Seen
Literature
Good
Foundations
World
Laid

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast- off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Some do not walk at all others walk in the highways a few walk across lots.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
While the very inhabitants of New England were thus fabling about the country a hundred miles inland, which was a terra incognitato them,... Champlain, the first Governor of Canada,... had already gone to war against the Iroquois in their forest forts, and penetrated to the Great Lakes and wintered there, before a Pilgrim had heard of New England.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
This whole earth in which we inhabit is but a point is space.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventure. Let the noon find you by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Some, it seems to me, elect their rulers for their crookedness. But I think that a straight stick makes the best cane, and an upright man the best ruler.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
For an impenetrable shield, stand inside yourself
Henry David Thoreau
Image
What is the singing of birds, or any natural sound, compared with the voice of one we love.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been inconceivably near to it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a vaster receding thought.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The Slothful do not have the time to become virtuous or despicable.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Almost all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming traits even to the eye.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
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
Image
I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake,I pray?
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Be it life or death, we crave only reality.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The intellect of most men is barren. They neither fertilize or are fertilized. It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, that gives birth to imagination...without nature-awakened imagination most persons do not really live in the world, they merely pass through it as they live dull lives of quiet desperation.
Henry David Thoreau