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What can be expressed in words can be expressed in life.
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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Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Expressed
Silence
Words
Life
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
The only government that I recognize--and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army--is that power thatestablishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.
Henry David Thoreau
The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Henry David Thoreau
I once found a kernel of corn in the middle of a deep wood by Walden, tucked in behind a lichen on a pine, about as high as my head, either by a crow or a squirrel. It was a mile at least from any corn-field.
Henry David Thoreau
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
Spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it, reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.
Henry David Thoreau
As naturally as the oak bears an acorn and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done.
Henry David Thoreau
The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth.
Henry David Thoreau
A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture.
Henry David Thoreau
It [is of] some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessities of life.
Henry David Thoreau
Biography, too, is liable to the same objection it should be autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our bowels that we may be somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be?
Henry David Thoreau
If a man constantly aspires is he not elevated?
Henry David Thoreau
Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man's morning work in this world?
Henry David Thoreau
We have need to be earth-born as well as heaven-born, gegeneis, as was said of the Titans of old, or in a better sense than they.
Henry David Thoreau
We hate the kindness which we understand.
Henry David Thoreau
To the sick, indeed, nature is sick, but to the well, a fountain of health.
Henry David Thoreau
However mean your life is, meet it and live it.
Henry David Thoreau
I should say that the useful results of science had accumulated, but that there had been no accumulation of knowledge, strictly speaking, for posterity for knowledge is to be acquired only by a corresponding experience. How can we know what we are told merely? Each man can interpret another's experience only by his own.
Henry David Thoreau
The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.
Henry David Thoreau
I mean that they (students) should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics.
Henry David Thoreau
