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Give me the old familiar world, post-office and all, with this ever new self, with this infinite expectation and faith, which does not know when it is beaten.

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
Faith
Beaten
Doe
Post
Give
Posts
Ever
Familiar
Self
Expectations
Giving
Infinite
World
Office
Sightseeing
Inspiration
Expectation

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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Most men, it seems to me, do not care for Nature and would sell their share in all her beauty, as long as they may live, for a stated sum - many for a glass of rum. Thank God, men cannot as yet fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!
Henry David Thoreau
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I lose my respect for the man who can make the mystery of sex the subject of a coarse jest, yet when you speak earnestly and seriously on the subject, is silent.
Henry David Thoreau
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When you knock, ask to see God — none of the servants.
Henry David Thoreau
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In the unbending of the arm to do the deed there is experience worth all the maxims in the world.
Henry David Thoreau
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There is always room and occasion enough for a true book on any subject as there is room for more light the brightest day and more rays will not interfere with the first.
Henry David Thoreau
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In 1848, Thoreau went to jail for refusing, as a protest against the Mexican war, to pay his poll tax. When RW Emerson came to bail him out, Emerson said, 'Henry, what are you doing in there?' Thoreau quietly replied, 'Ralph, what are you doing out there?'
Henry David Thoreau
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It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered written on the subject of getting a living: how to make getting a living not merely honest and honorable, but altogether inviting and glorious for if getting a living is not so, then living is not.
Henry David Thoreau
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You don't know your testament when you see it.
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
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You may rely on it that you have the best of me in my books, and that I am not worth seeing personally, the stuttering, blunderingclod-hopper that I am. Even poetry, you know, is in one sense an infinite brag and exaggeration. Not that I do not stand on all that I have written,--but what am I to the truth I feebly utter?
Henry David Thoreau
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Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.
Henry David Thoreau
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I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents.
Henry David Thoreau
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Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.
Henry David Thoreau
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Shall a man not have his spring as well as the plants?
Henry David Thoreau
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To be awake is to be alive.
Henry David Thoreau
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The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.
Henry David Thoreau
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If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls, and there arenight owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business.
Henry David Thoreau
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I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.
Henry David Thoreau
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As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.
Henry David Thoreau
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Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man's sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion.
Henry David Thoreau