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I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety.

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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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Existence
Gratefulness
Sense
Contented
Anything
Thanksgiving
Wells
Definite
Well
Surprising
Nothing
Perpetual
Variety
Grateful

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The philosopher's conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men's, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal laws.
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It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.
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Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.
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The object of love expands and grows before us to eternity, until it includes all that is lovely, and we become all that can love.
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New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion.
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The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what we do and yet how much is not done by us!
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A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally, as animals conceive at certain seasons their kind only. We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.
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Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.
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Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.
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Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted.
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At least let us have healthy books.
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I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that Nature with which I am acquainted.
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For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labour of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.
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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.
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For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.
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Cold and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off.
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A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it.
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We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.
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We cannot well do without our sins they are the highway of our virtue.
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