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The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.

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
Men
Fireman
Commonly
Simplest
Heroic
Hero

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I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beechtree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines.
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I have seen some whose consciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their cud, and their lives of course yielded no milk.
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For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?
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Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
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Every poet has trembled on the verge of science.
Henry David Thoreau
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There is no just and serene criticism as yet.
Henry David Thoreau
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I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
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A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man's life as in a book.
Henry David Thoreau
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Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love and in proportion to our truthfulness and confidence in one another, our lives are divine and miraculous, and answer to our ideal. . . . Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.
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Philosophy, having crept clinging to the rocks so far, puts out its feelers many ways in vain.
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Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them - that it was a vain endeavor?
Henry David Thoreau
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We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect. [So why not suspect good rather than bad in events, people and life and thereby find it more?]
Henry David Thoreau
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The poet's body even is not fed like other men's, but he sometimes tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives adivine life. By the healthful and invigorating thrills of inspiration his life is preserved to a serene old age.
Henry David Thoreau
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No doubt another may also think for me but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.
Henry David Thoreau
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That grand old poem called Winter
Henry David Thoreau
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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
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One revelation has been made to the Indian, another to the white man.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
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I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.
Henry David Thoreau
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I suppose that the great questions of Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge Absolute, which used to be discussed at Concord, are still unsettled.
Henry David Thoreau