Quote

I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?

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
Living
Dream
Always
Life
Distinguish
Waking
Imagine
Funny

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
The necessity of labor and conversation with many men and things to the scholar is rarely well remembered.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the severest satire.... The greater the genius, the keener the edge of the satire.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
What the first philosopher taught the last will have to repeat.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I do not wish, it happens, to be associated with Massachusetts, either in holding slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better than herself in these respects.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Who could believe in the prophecies ... that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
After all the field of battle possesses many advantages over the drawing-room. There at least is no room for pretension or excessive ceremony, no shaking of hands or rubbing of noses, which make one doubt your sincerity, but hearty as well as hard hand-play. It at least exhibits one of the faces of humanity, the former only a mask.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
There are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically opposite.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
If Columbus was the first to discover the islands, Americus Vespucius and Cabot, and the Puritans, and we their descendants, havediscovered only the shores of America.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Always the laws of light are the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
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
Image
The Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The schools begin with what they call the elements, and where do they end?
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The outward is only the outside of that which is within. Men are not concealed under habits, but are revealed by them they are their true clothes.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men's heads and unobserved bythem. We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
You don't know your testament when you see it.
Henry David Thoreau