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The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.
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
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Ecologist
Environmentalist
Essayist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Poet
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
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Poet
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More quotes by Henry David Thoreau
I have traveled a good deal in Concord and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.
Henry David Thoreau
A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep.
Henry David Thoreau
I did not go to Boston, for with regard to that place I sympathize with one of my neighbors, an old man, who has not been there since the last war, when he was compelled to go. No, I have a real genius for staying at home.
Henry David Thoreau
As they say in geology, time never fails, there is always enough of it, so I may say, criticism never fails.
Henry David Thoreau
I love a life whose plot is simple.
Henry David Thoreau
While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.
Henry David Thoreau
If you would feel the full force of a tempest, take up your residence on the top of Mount Washington, or at the Highland Light, inTruro.
Henry David Thoreau
The wisest man preaches no doctrines he has no scheme he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky.
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
The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity when contrasted with a finer intelligence. They appear but as the fashions of past days,--mere courtliness, knee-buckles and small- clothes, out of date.
Henry David Thoreau
I have myself to respect, but to myself I am not amiable but my friend is my amiableness personified.
Henry David Thoreau
We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.
Henry David Thoreau
What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.
Henry David Thoreau
We do not enjoy poetry unless we know it to be poetry.
Henry David Thoreau
There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness.
Henry David Thoreau
Though my life is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at an elevated angle, it is as if it were redeemed. When the desire to be better than we are is really sincere we are instantly elevated, and so far better already.
Henry David Thoreau
The birds I heard today, which, fortunately, did not come within the scope of my science, sang as freshly as if it had been the first morning of creation.
Henry David Thoreau
God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator.
Henry David Thoreau
Blessed are they who never read a newspaper, for they shall see Nature, and through her, God.
Henry David Thoreau
Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid.
Henry David Thoreau
