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However mean your life is, meet it and live it do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.

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
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Courage
Names
Call
Live
Shun
Hard
Simplicity
Mean
However
Life
Meet
Poverty

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass.
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I feel as if my life had grown more outward when I can express it.
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It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance ... To perceive freshly, with fresh senses is to be inspired.
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The student may read Homer or Æschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that hein some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages.
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It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.
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Eastward I go only by force but westward I go free.
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All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all.
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It would surpass the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run.
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Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours and yet how long it stands in vain!... Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised.
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One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputation another in his manners, and enjoys a good one.
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If however the law is so promulgated that it of necessity makes you an agent of injustices against another, then I say to you ... break the law.
Henry David Thoreau
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Unless the human race perspire more than I do, there is no occasion to live by the sweat of their brow. If men cannot get on without money (the smallest amount will suffice), the truest method of earning it is by working as a laborer at one dollar per day. You are least dependent so I speak as an expert, having used several kinds of labor.
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It is no more dusky in ordinary nights than our mind's habitual atmosphere, and the moonlight is as bright as our most illuminatedmoments are.
Henry David Thoreau
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Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. Why, nature is but another name for health.
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A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent lyres are struck.
Henry David Thoreau
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As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as theevening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.
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To a small man every greater is an exaggeration.
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Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I'm astonished to perceive how good a purpose the level of excitement is made to serve.
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We could not help contrasting the equanimity of Nature with the bustle and impatience of man. His words and actions presume alwaysa crisis near at hand, but she is forever silent and unpretending.
Henry David Thoreau
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How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a slight outrage against universal laws.
Henry David Thoreau