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Law never made men a whit more just and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.
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
Made
Daily
Never
Respect
Men
Law
Means
Whit
Wells
Disposed
Well
Anarchy
Mean
Agents
Even
Injustice
More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
All fables, indeed, have their morals but the innocent enjoy the story.
Henry David Thoreau
How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We all live according to rule. Some men are bedridden all world-ridden.
Henry David Thoreau
Many old people receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long time ago.
Henry David Thoreau
Where is the unexplored land but in our own untried enterprises? To an adventurous spirit any place--London, New York, Worcester, or his own yard--is unexplored land, to seek which Frémont and Kane travel so far. To a sluggish and defeated spirit even the Great Basin and the Polaris are trivial places.
Henry David Thoreau
Good deeds are no less good because their object is unworthy.
Henry David Thoreau
Bread may not always nourish us but it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy.
Henry David Thoreau
Nature, even when she is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance of a certain generosity at the roots.
Henry David Thoreau
I always see those of whom I have heard well with a slight disappointment. They are so much better than the great herd, and yet the heavens are not shivered into diamonds over their heads.
Henry David Thoreau
Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon.
Henry David Thoreau
Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.
Henry David Thoreau
One may be drunk with love without being any nearer to finding his mate.
Henry David Thoreau
How can he remember well his ignorance - which his growth requires - who has so often to use his knowledge?
Henry David Thoreau
Your richest veins don't lie nearest the surface.
Henry David Thoreau
You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.
Henry David Thoreau
The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea.
Henry David Thoreau
There is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by the use of expediency. There is no such thing as sliding up- hill.In morals the only sliders are backsliders.
Henry David Thoreau
Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, seewhat isbefore you, and walkon intofuturity.
Henry David Thoreau
Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month's labor in the farmer's almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.
Henry David Thoreau
Fame itself is but an epitaph as late, as false, as true.
Henry David Thoreau
I have never met with a friend who furnished me sea-room. I have only tacked a few times and come to anchor - not sailed - made no voyage, carried no venture.
Henry David Thoreau
