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The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Eyes
Dawns
Stars
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Awake
Light
Enlightenment
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Sun
Darkness

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep.
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I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know!
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However mean your life is, meet it and live it do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.
Henry David Thoreau
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We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect. [So why not suspect good rather than bad in events, people and life and thereby find it more?]
Henry David Thoreau
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My vicinity affords many good walks and though for so many years I have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours' walking will carry me to as strange a country as I ever expect to see.
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If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services.
Henry David Thoreau
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There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.
Henry David Thoreau
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The necessity of labor and conversation with many men and things to the scholar is rarely well remembered.
Henry David Thoreau
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Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.
Henry David Thoreau
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The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter, and is about as ample at one season as at another. It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and dryness.
Henry David Thoreau
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It makes no odds where a man goes or stays, if he is only about his business.
Henry David Thoreau
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Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life ... would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.
Henry David Thoreau
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The voice of nature is always encouraging.
Henry David Thoreau
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If there is nothing new on the earth, still the traveler always has a resource in the skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types on this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new truth there.
Henry David Thoreau
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The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands.
Henry David Thoreau
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As we looked up in silence to those distant lights, we were reminded that it was a rare imagination which first taught that the stars are worlds, and had conferred a great benefit on mankind.
Henry David Thoreau
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I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.
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Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
Henry David Thoreau
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My desire for knowledge is intermittent but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated with the fumes, call it, of that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over heights unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant.
Henry David Thoreau
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The genuine remains of Ossian, or those ancient poems which bear his name, though of less fame and extent, are, in many respects,of the same stamp with the Iliad itself. He asserts the dignity of the bard no less than Homer, and in his era, we hear of no other priest than he.
Henry David Thoreau