Quote

To have made even one person's life a little better, that is to succeed.

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
Persons
Person
Better
Little
Even
Made
Philanthropy
Life
Succeed
Littles

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Image
We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which came and went on the western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I have found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Every man casts a shadow not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?
Henry David Thoreau
Image
What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
We go on dating from Cold Fridays and Great Snows but a little colder Friday, or greater snow would put a period to man's existence on the globe.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice ... While I am looking at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. He is a different sort of man, that's all.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
A man of fine perceptions is more truly feminine than a merely sentimental woman.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
This life we live is a strange dream, and I don't believe at all any account men give of it.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The schools begin with what they call the elements, and where do they end?
Henry David Thoreau
Image
A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent lyres are struck.
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
A man receives only what he is ready to receive... The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest of what he has observed, he does not observe.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
The New Testament is remarkable for its pure morality the best of the Hindoo Scripture, for its pure intellectuality. The readeris nowhere raised into and sustained in a higher, purer, or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagvat-Geeta.... It is unquestionably one of the noblest and most sacred scriptures which have come down to us.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
One revelation has been made to the Indian, another to the white man.
Henry David Thoreau
Image
What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.
Henry David Thoreau