Quote

Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are ... rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.

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
Light
Dust
Dryness
Truth
Details
Dews
Doe
Unless
Flashes
May
Knowledge
Rendered
Come
Heaven
Dew
Even
Living
Fertile
Mind
Science
Flash
Facts
Fresh

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
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Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.
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I have no time to be in a hurry.
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If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal - that is your success.
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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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An unclean person is universally a slothful one.
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I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.
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You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.
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The hounding of a dog pursuing a fox or other animal in the horizon may have first suggested the notes of the hunting-horn to alternate with and relieve the lungs of the dog. This natural bugle long resounded in the woods of the ancient world before the horn was invented.
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I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.
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They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
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How shall we account for our pursuits, if they are original? We get the language with which to describe our various lives out of acommon mint.
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As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full.
Henry David Thoreau
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One should be always on the trail of one's own deepest nature. For it is the fearless living out of your own essential nature that connects you to the Divine.
Henry David Thoreau
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What is religion? That which is never spoken.
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It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
Henry David Thoreau
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I did not know that we had ever quarreled.
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If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him . . he will be surrounded by grandeur.
Henry David Thoreau
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I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.
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The world rests on principles.
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