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My greatest skill has been to want but little.
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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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Greatest
Happiness
Littles
Little
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery.
Henry David Thoreau
In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident.
Henry David Thoreau
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
Henry David Thoreau
Bribed with a little sunlight and a few prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath with hymns.
Henry David Thoreau
Even the utmost good-will and harmony and practical kindness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. We do not wish for Friends to feed and clothe our bodies-neighbors are kind enough for that-but to do the like office to our spirits.
Henry David Thoreau
A journal, is a book that shall contain a record of all your joy, your ecstasy, what you are grateful for.
Henry David Thoreau
The words of some men are thrown forcibly against you and adhere like burrs.
Henry David Thoreau
No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher.
Henry David Thoreau
A man sees only what concerns him.... How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects!
Henry David Thoreau
This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction.
Henry David Thoreau
I suppose that the great questions of Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge Absolute, which used to be discussed at Concord, are still unsettled.
Henry David Thoreau
Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.
Henry David Thoreau
Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you'll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books. And then you'll be in as much trouble as I am!
Henry David Thoreau
For my own part, I commonly attend more to nature than to man, but any affecting human event may blind our eyes to natural objects. I was so absorbed in him as to be surprised whenever I detected the routine of the natural world surviving still, or met persons going about their affairs indifferent.
Henry David Thoreau
Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another.
Henry David Thoreau
If you are chosen town clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless.
Henry David Thoreau
Philosophy, having crept clinging to the rocks so far, puts out its feelers many ways in vain.
Henry David Thoreau
The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and generalizes their widest deductions.
Henry David Thoreau
Our circumstances answer to our expectations and the demand of our natures.
Henry David Thoreau
The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar institutions and edicts for his defense, but the toughest son ofearth and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance his fainting companions will recognize the God in him. It is the worshipers of beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world.
Henry David Thoreau
