Quote

As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there some, prodigies and portents some rarely look up at all their heads, like the brutes,' are directed toward Earth. Some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable. The world runs to see the panorama, when there is a panorama in the sky which few go to see.

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
Mind
Sky
Serenity
Men
Toward
Directed
Portents
Like
Beauty
Runs
Panorama
World
Space
Heads
Prodigies
Running
Purity
Ineffable
Earth
Rarely
Brutes
Look
Appear
Skies
Looks
Clouds
Behold

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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Life is grand, and so are its environments of Past and Future. Would the face of nature be so serene and beautiful if man's destiny were not equally so?
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For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it.
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Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savagestands on the unelastic plank of famine.
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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.
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Dissent without action is consent.
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The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils.
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I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports.
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Color, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.
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The gods cannot misunderstand, man cannot explain.
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We should seek to be fellow students with the pupil, and should learn of, as well as with him, if we would be most helpful to him.
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To forget all about your mistakes adds to them perhaps.
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To be awake is to be completely alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake.
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That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.
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Any man knows when he is justified, and all the wits in the world cannot enlighten him on that point. The murderer always knows that he is justly punished but when a government takes the life of a man without the consent of his conscience, it is an audacious government, and is taking a step towards its own dissolution.
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We are ashamed of our fear for we know that a righteous man would not suspect danger nor incur any. Wherever a man feels fear, there is an avenger.
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I love a life whose plot is simple.
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In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.
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It is the characteristic of great poems that they will yield of their sense in due proportion to the hasty and the deliberate reader. To the practical they will be common sense, and to the wise wisdom as either the traveler may wet his lips, or an army may fill its water-casks at a full stream.
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What is the singing of birds, or any natural sound, compared with the voice of one we love.
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Verily, chemistry is not a splitting of hairs when you have got half a dozen raw Irishmen in the laboratory.
Henry David Thoreau