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Since most of us spend our lives doing ordinary tasks, the most important thing is to carry them out extraordinarily well.

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
Spend
Since
Lives
Extraordinarily
Wells
Tasks
Well
Carry
Important
Greatness
Thing
Ordinary

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What a healthy out-of-door appetite it takes to relish the apple of life, the apple of the world, then!
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Shall a man not have his spring as well as the plants?
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Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventure. Let the noon find you by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played.
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There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.
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No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?
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A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be Uranus, or it may be in the shutter.
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Heaven is not one of your fertile Ohio bottoms, you may depend on it.
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The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to discuss the characters of individuals.
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There must be some nerve and heroism in our love, as of a winter morning.
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Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.
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What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?
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That grand old poem called Winter
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People die of fright and live of confidence.
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In some pictures of Provincetown the persons of the inhabitants are not drawn below the ankles, so much being supposed to be buried in the sand.
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How full of the creative genius is the air in which these [snowflakes] are generated! I should hardly admire them more if real stars fell and lodged on my coat. Nature is full of genius. Full of the divinity. So that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.
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Our thoughts are epochs in our lives all else is but as a journal of the winds that blow while we are here.
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I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.
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Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.
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How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.
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I have not read far in the statutes of this Commonwealth. It is not profitable reading. They do not always say what is true and they do not always mean what they say.
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