Quote

. . . we should be men first, and subjects afterward.

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
Disobedience
Subjects
Respect
Firsts
First
Men
Afterward

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
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
Henry David Thoreau
Image
What can be expressed in words can be expressed in life.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Nature is an admirable schoolmistress.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
A sufficiently great and generous trust could never be abused.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The philosopher's conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men's, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal laws.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
If I thought that I could speak with discrimination and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, I should praise them, but it tasks me too much. They seem to be the most civil and humane, but I may be mistaken.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body, in a sheltered place but man, having discovered fire, boxes up someair in a spacious apartment, and warms that.... Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a little time for the fine arts.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
To speak or do anything that shall concern mankind, one must speak and act as if well, or from that grain of health which he has left.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
That man is richest who's pleasure are cheapest.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
There is one consolation in being sick and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Keep up the fires of thought, and all will go well.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
What the first philosopher taught the last will have to repeat.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Be as the sailor who keeps the polestar in his eye. By so doing we may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we will maintain a true course.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
At death our friends and relatives either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart farther from us and are forgotten. Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Live free, child of the mist,- and with respect to knowledge we are allchildren of the mist.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I found that they knew but little of the history of their race, and could be entertained by stories about their ancestors as readily as any way .
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The scholar may be sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort, without a corresponding energy of the body.
Henry David Thoreau