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Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay than in the meadow where it grew and we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?

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
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birthplace of Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau
Henry D. Thoreau
Flower
Scholastics
Grew
Meadow
Feet
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Whether
Wet
Better
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Air
Advantage
Scholastic

More quotes by Henry David Thoreau

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There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of more importance than all the rest, which the historian can never know.
Henry David Thoreau
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The journalists think that they cannot say too much in favor of such improvements in husbandry it is a safe theme, like pietybut as for the beauty of one of these model farms, I would as lief see a patent churn and a man turning it. They are, commonly, places merely where somebody is making money, it may be counterfeiting.
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I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust.
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Friends are made for caring and sharing. Friends do not live in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody.
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The fact which interests us most is the life of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. Nothing will dignify and elevate science while it is sundered so wholly from the moral life of its devotee.
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It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.
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The most attractive sentences are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and roundest. They are spoken firmly and conclusively,as if the speaker had a right to know what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been well learned.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.
Henry David Thoreau
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Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. ... Shall we always study to obtain more, and not sometimes be content with less?
Henry David Thoreau
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Man wanted a home, a place for warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.
Henry David Thoreau
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The past is only so heroic as we see it. It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field.
Henry David Thoreau
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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
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What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own.
Henry David Thoreau
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While some men believe in the infinite, some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.
Henry David Thoreau
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How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We all live according to rule. Some men are bedridden all world-ridden.
Henry David Thoreau
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All the past is here, present to be tried let it approve itself if it can.
Henry David Thoreau
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Men seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuilding the works behind them, as they are battered down by the encroachments of time but while they loiter, they and their works both fall prey to the arch enemy.
Henry David Thoreau
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It is tranquil people who accomplish much.
Henry David Thoreau
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Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.
Henry David Thoreau
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My vicinity affords many good walks and though for so many years I have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours' walking will carry me to as strange a country as I ever expect to see.
Henry David Thoreau