Quote

I saw deep in the eyes of the animals the human soul look out upon me. I saw where it was born deep down under feathers and fur, or condemned for a while to roam four-footed among the brambles,I caught the clinging mute glance of the prisoner and swore that I would be faithful.

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
Translator
Writer
birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Humans
Eyes
Prisoner
Roam
Looks
Four
Faithful
Fur
Would
Upon
Caught
Mute
Eye
Animals
Glance
Born
Saws
Clinging
Soul
Among
Condemned
Brambles
Look
Deep
Glances
Footed
Human
Animal
Feathers
Swore

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The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor
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All the past is here, present to be tried let it approve itself if it can.
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The strongest wind cannot stagger a Spirit it is a Spirit's breath. A just man's purpose cannot be split on any Grampus or material rock, but itself will split rocks till it succeeds.
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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.
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Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass, - this was my daily work.
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Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
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Music is the crystallization of sound.
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A fact may blossom into a truth.
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Nature is an admirable schoolmistress.
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For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?
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One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something.
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A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man,--a denizen of the woods. The pale white man! I do not wonder that the African pitied him.
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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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Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old return to them. Things do not change we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.
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Don't spend your time in drilling soldiers, who may turn out hirelings after all, but give to undrilled peasantry a country to fight for.
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Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.
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It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters.
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All good things are cheap: all bad are very dear.
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I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came?--till you and I came over to him?
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