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Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? Or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are NOT good?
Henry David Thoreau
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Henry David Thoreau
Age: 44 †
Born: 1817
Born: July 12
Died: 1862
Died: May 6
Abolitionist
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Autobiographer
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
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Philosopher
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
As our domestic fowls are said to have their original in the wild pheasant of India, so our domestic thoughts have their prototypes in the thoughts of her philosophers.
Henry David Thoreau
We saw men haying far off in the meadow, their heads waving like the grass which they cut. In the distance the wind seemed to bend all alike.
Henry David Thoreau
We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success. What we do best or most perfectly is what we have most thoroughly learned by the longest practice, and at length it falls from us without our notice, as a leaf from a tree.
Henry David Thoreau
Some simple dishes recommend themselves to our imaginations as well as palates.
Henry David Thoreau
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
Henry David Thoreau
The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar institutions and edicts for his defense, but the toughest son ofearth and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance his fainting companions will recognize the God in him. It is the worshipers of beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world.
Henry David Thoreau
All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all.
Henry David Thoreau
Men are probably nearer the essential truth in their superstitions than in their science.
Henry David Thoreau
The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest.
Henry David Thoreau
Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. . . .
Henry David Thoreau
Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men's heads and unobserved bythem. We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows.
Henry David Thoreau
All that man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love-to sing, and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love.
Henry David Thoreau
I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
Henry David Thoreau
A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter, summer is in his heart.
Henry David Thoreau
If there is nothing new on the earth, still the traveler always has a resource in the skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types on this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new truth there.
Henry David Thoreau
If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me.
Henry David Thoreau
There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.
Henry David Thoreau
Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.
Henry David Thoreau
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.
Henry David Thoreau
When I consider how, after sunset, the stars come out gradually in troops from behind the hills and woods, I confess that I could not have contrived a more curious and inspiring sight.
Henry David Thoreau
