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When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.

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
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Shadow
Petty
Wise
Pleasures
Existence
Fears
Pleasure
Perceive
Fear
Permanent
Reality
Absolutes
Great
Absolute
Things
Worthy
Unhurried

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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The highest condition of art is artlessness.
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There may be something petty in a refined taste it easily degenerates into effeminacy. It does not consider the broadest use. It is not content with simple good and bad, and so is fastidious and curious or nice only.
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I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice ... While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. He is a different sort of man, that's all.
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Most men cry better than they speak. You get more nurture out of them by pinching than addressing them.
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You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.
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We hate the kindness which we understand.
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You know about a person who deeply interests you more than you can be told. A look, a gesture, an act, which to everybody else is insignificant tells you more about that one than words can.
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Things don't change. We change.
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Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.
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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.
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It is dry, hazy June weather. We are more of the earth, farther from heaven these days.
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I think that Nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace.
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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?
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How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
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Some do not walk at all others walk in the highways a few walk across lots.
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We should endeavor practically in our lives to correct all the defects which our imagination detects.
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Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.
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In the religion of all nations a purity is hinted at, which, I fear, men never attain to.
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Continued traveling is far from productive. It begins with wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet sore, and erelong it will wear a man clean up, after making his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the afterlife of those who have traveled much is very pathetic.
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I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.
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