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See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

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
Divine
Deeds
Tyrant
Opinion
Determine
Sneak
Public
Thinks
Determines
Rather
Slave
Tyrants
Men
Private
Prisoner
Thinking
Fame
Compared
Sneaks
Fate
Immortal
Vaguely
Weak
Fears
Indicates

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If some are prosecuted for abusing children, others deserve to be prosecuted for maltreating the face of nature committed to their care.
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Today you may write a chapter on the advantages of traveling, and tomorrow you may write another chapter on the advantages of not traveling.
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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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To be awake is to be completely alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.
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Who is old enough to have learned from experience?
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To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery.
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That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience.
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What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary?
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I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beechtree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
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Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
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They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself.
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Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and the hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide.
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Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction - a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the muse.
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The philosopher's conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men's, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal laws.
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The little things in life are as interesting as the big ones.
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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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Especially the transcendental philosophy needs the leaven of humor to render it light and digestible.
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When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?
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Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.
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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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