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Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
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Autobiographer
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
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Naturalist
Philosopher
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
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Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. I buy but a few things, and those not till long after I begin to want them, so that when I do get them I am prepared to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet.
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A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double the hind parts are equivalent to another kitten with which the fore part plays. She does not discover that her tail belongs to her till you tread upon it.
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How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends, that we might go and meet their ideal cousins.
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What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own.
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All endeavour calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil.
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Who hears the fishes when they cry?
Henry David Thoreau
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That government is best which governs not at all and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.
Henry David Thoreau
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As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.
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Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.
Henry David Thoreau
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There has always been the same amount of light in the world. The new and missing stars, the comets and eclipses, do not affect thegeneral illumination, for only our glasses appreciate them.
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If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard.
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To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are the broad noon of his existence.
Henry David Thoreau
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I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side.
Henry David Thoreau
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Where there is a lull in truth an institution springs up.
Henry David Thoreau
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Verily, chemistry is not a splitting of hairs when you have got half a dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory.
Henry David Thoreau
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Instead of water we got here a draught of beer, a lumberer's drink, which would acclimate and naturalize a man at once,-which would make him see green, and, if he slept, dream that he heard the wind sough among the pines.
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Water is a pioneer which the settler follows, taking advantage of its improvements.
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Time is like a handful of sand - the tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers.
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It is not worth the while to let our imperfections disturb us always.
Henry David Thoreau