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I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.

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
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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Agriculture
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Bent

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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Simplify your life. Don't waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don't burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don't destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!
Henry David Thoreau
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I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable but my friend is my amiableness personified.
Henry David Thoreau
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You ask particularly after my health. I suppose that I have not many months to live but, of course, I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.
Henry David Thoreau
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To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning.
Henry David Thoreau
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Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle, it is as if it were redeemed. When the desire to be better than we are is really sincere we are instantly elevated, and so far better already.
Henry David Thoreau
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Our molting season, like that of the fouls, must be a crisis in our lives.
Henry David Thoreau
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I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men. The former are so much the freer.
Henry David Thoreau
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I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot.
Henry David Thoreau
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A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.
Henry David Thoreau
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The hounding of a dog pursuing a fox or other animal in the horizon may have first suggested the notes of the hunting-horn to alternate with and relieve the lungs of the dog. This natural bugle long resounded in the woods of the ancient world before the horn was invented.
Henry David Thoreau
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When a noble deed is done, who is likely to appreciate it? They who are noble themselves.
Henry David Thoreau
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I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me.
Henry David Thoreau
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It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself.
Henry David Thoreau
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If to chaffer and higgle are bad in trade, they are much worse in Love. It demands directness as of an arrow.
Henry David Thoreau
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The ocean is a wilderness reaching round the globe, wilder than a Bengal jungle, and fuller of monsters, washing the very wharves of our cities and the gardens of our sea-side residences.
Henry David Thoreau
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New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.
Henry David Thoreau
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Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.
Henry David Thoreau
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Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are ... rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
Henry David Thoreau
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The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down.
Henry David Thoreau