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It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.
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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Taking
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Without
Long
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Pond
Men
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Remarkable
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.
Henry David Thoreau
I have no time to be in a hurry.
Henry David Thoreau
Be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely invested.
Henry David Thoreau
Let go of the past and live the future . . . Live the life you imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
When we come down into the distant village, visible from the mountain-top, the nobler inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed, and left only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination of poets which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of their heroes.
Henry David Thoreau
You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.
Henry David Thoreau
The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of hate.
Henry David Thoreau
Hate can pardon more than love.
Henry David Thoreau
Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old return to them. Things do not change we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.
Henry David Thoreau
Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.
Henry David Thoreau
A man can suffocate on courtesy.
Henry David Thoreau
No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.
Henry David Thoreau
If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events that make the news transpire,--thinnerthan the paper on which it is printed,--then these things will fill the world for you but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them.
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
There are many skillful apprentices, but few master workmen.
Henry David Thoreau
I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength.
Henry David Thoreau
All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of thewords by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy.
Henry David Thoreau
Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly suggests what change is to be made.
Henry David Thoreau
I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I.... I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live?
Henry David Thoreau
I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune.
Henry David Thoreau
