Quote

The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams.

Henry David Thoreau

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Nature
Pine
Maples
Stills
Vigor
Uprightness
Still
Scream
Pines
Need
Background
Asserts
Needs
Backgrounds
Rectitude
Relief
Flourishes
Ancient
Screams
Lives
Maple

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
A thoroughbred business man cannot enter heartily upon the business of life without first looking into his accounts.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever checks and compensations there may be. It is not enough to tell me that you worked hard to get your gold. So does the Devil work hard. The way of transgressors may be hard in many respects.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We need the tonic of the wilderness, to wade sometimes in the marsh where the bitten and the meadow hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin!
Henry David Thoreau
Image
What avails it that another loves you, if he does not understand you? Such love is a curse.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I did not know that we had ever quarreled.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I don't like the city better, the more I see it, but worse. I am ashamed of my eyes that behold it. It is a thousand times meanerthan I could have imagined.... The pigs in the street are the most respectable part of the population.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
As I love nature, as I love singing birds...I love thee, my friend.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one day in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to me has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
It is not when I am going to meet him, but when I am just turning away and leaving him alone, that I discover what God is. I say, God. I am not sure that that is the name. You will know what I mean.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
It would surpass the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
When the first light dawned on the earth, and the birds awoke, and the brave river was heard rippling confidently seaward, and the nimble early rising wind rustled the oak leaves about our tent, all people, having reinforced their bodies and their souls with sleep, and cast aside doubt and fear, were invited to unattempted adventures.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Things don't change. We change.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
People seldom hit what they do not aim at.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes: yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.
Henry David Thoreau