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Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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Nothing
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Expressing
Right
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I am reminded by my journey how exceedingly new this country still is. You have only to travel for a few days into the interior and back parts even of many of the old States, to come to that very America which the Northmen, and Cabot, and Gosnold, and Smith, and Raleigh visited.
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Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been inconceivably near to it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue caught from a vaster receding thought.
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It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.
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The universe expects every man to do his duty in his parallel of latitude.
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Waves of a serene life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather.
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Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher's desk.
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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.
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A man of fine perceptions is more truly feminine than a merely sentimental woman.
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Every sentence is the result of a long probation.
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Summer passes into autumn in some unimaginable point of time, like the turning of a leaf.
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You speak of poverty and dependence. Who are poor and dependent? Who are rich and independent? When was it that men agreed to respect the appearance and not the reality?
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That man is richest who's pleasure are cheapest.
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A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart.
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It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
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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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Duty is one and invariable it requires no impossibilities, nor can it ever be disregarded with impunity.
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The earth I tread on is not a dead inert mass. It is a body, has a spirit is organic and fluid to the influence of its spirit and to whatever particle of the spirit is in me.
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