Quote

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

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

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
As I love nature, as I love singing birds, and gleaming stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning and evening, and summer and winter, I love thee, my Friend.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
My eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground much than at the heavens.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
One who knew how to appropriate the true value of this world would be the poorest man in it. The poor rich man! all he has is whathe has bought.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
A sufficiently great and generous trust could never be abused.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
. . . we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
One revelation has been made to the Indian, another to the white man.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.
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
Image
Yet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I am struck by the simplicity of light in the atmosphere in the autumn, as if the earth absorbed none, and out of this profusion of dazzling light came the autumnal tints.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are... than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We should read history as little critically as we consider the landscape, and be more interested by the atmospheric tints and various lights and shades which the intervening spaces create than by its groundwork and composition.
Henry David Thoreau