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I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.

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
Friends
Lone
Half
Foe
Woman
Remaining
Lost
Silver
Witted
States
Revolutionary
Pitied
Saws
Foes
Respect
Timid
State
Spoons

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A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
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I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment.
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Especially the transcendental philosophy needs the leaven of humor to render it light and digestible.
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It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.
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Instead of water we got here a draught of beer, a lumberer's drink, which would acclimate and naturalize a man at once,-which would make him see green, and, if he slept, dream that he heard the wind sough among the pines.
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It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.
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The same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck.
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From exertion come wisdom and purity from sloth ignorance and sensuality.
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Impulse is, after all, the best linguist its logic, if not conformable to Aristotle, cannot fail to be most convincing.
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I love you not as something private and personal, which is my own, but as something universal and worthy of love which I have found.
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I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.
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He who cuts down woods beyond a certain limit exterminates birds.
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My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.
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The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.
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Even the best things are not equal to their fame.
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A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man's door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it.
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The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one's appetite is not too keen.
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I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.
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Duty is one and invariable it requires no impossibilities, nor can it ever be disregarded with impunity.
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Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap.
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